mma McChesney soothingly, and patted
one gesticulating arm. "It has been a bit of a strain--for both of us.
But, you know, we agreed it would be best this way. We've ten days
more to go. Let's stick it out as we've begun. It has been best for
us, for the office, for the business. The next time you find yourself
choked up with a stock of fancy adjectives, write a sonnet to me. Work
'em off that way."

T. A. Buck stood silent a moment, regarding her with a concentration
that would have unnerved a woman less poised.

"Emma McChesney, when you talk like that, so coolly, so evenly, so--so
darned mentally, I sometimes wonder if you really----"

"Don't say it, T. A. Because you don't mean it. I've had to fight for
most of my happiness. I've never before found it ready at hand. I've
always had to dig for it with a shovel and a spade and a pickax, and
then blast. I had almost twenty years of that--from the time I was
eighteen until I was thirty-eight. It taught me to take my happiness
seriously and my troubles lightly." She shut her eyes for a moment,
and her voice was very low and very deep and very vibrant. "So, when
I'm coolest and evenest and most mental, T. A., you may know that I've
struck gold."

A great glow illumined Buck's fine eyes. He took two quick steps in
her direction. But Emma McChesney, one hand on the door-knob, warned
him off with the other.

"Hey--wait a minute!" pleaded Buck.

"Can't. I've a fitting at the tailor's at three-thirty--my new suit.
Wait till you see it!"

"The dickens you have! But so have I"--he jerked out his watch--"at
three-thirty! It's the suit I'm going to wear when I travel as a
blushing bridegroom."

"So's mine. And look here, T. A.! We can't both leave this place for
a fitting. It's absurd. If this keeps on, it will break up the
business. We'll have to get married one at a time--or, at least, get
our trousseaux one at a time. What's your suit?"

"Sort of brown."

"Brown? So's mine! Good heavens, T. A., we'll look like a minstrel
troupe!"

Buck sighed resignedly.

"If I telephone my tailor that I can't make it until four-thirty, will
you promise to be back by that time?"

"Yes; but remember, if your bride appears in a skirt that sags in the
back or a coat that bunches across the shoulders, the crime will lie at
your door."

So it was that the lynx-eyed office staff began to wonder if, after
all, Pop Henderson was the wizard that he had clai