"
"Oh! Er--parlor?"
Mrs. McChesney smiled. "I won't ask you to make yourself that
miserable. You can't smoke in the parlor. We'll find a quiet corner in
the writing-room, where you men can light up. I don't want to take
advantage of you."
[Illustration: "'Not that you look your age--not by ten years!'"]
Down in the writing-room at eight they formed a strange little group.
Ed Meyers, flushed and eager, his pink face glowing like a peony,
talking, arguing, smoking, reasoning, coaxing, with the spur of a fat
commission to urge him on; Abel Fromkin, with his peculiarly pallid
skin made paler in contrast to the purplish-black line where the razor
had passed, showing no hint of excitement except in the restless
little black eyes and in the work-scarred hands that rolled cigarette
after cigarette, each glowing for one brief instant, only to die down
to a blackened ash the next; Emma McChesney, half fascinated, half
distrustful, listening in spite of herself, and trying to still a
small inner voice--a voice that had never advised her ill.
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