d his eyes
found hers with a quite natural magnetism.

"Oh, T. A., my dear, my dear! I didn't know you were so handsome! And
how beautiful New York is! Tell me: Have I grown old? Have I?"

T. A. bundled her into a taxi and gazed at her in some alarm.

"You! Old! What put that nonsense into your head? You're tired,
dear. We'll go home, and you'll have a good rest, and a quiet
evening----"

"Rest!" echoed Emma, and sat up very straight, her cheeks pink. "Quiet
evening! T. A. Buck, listen to me. I've had nothing but rest and
quiet evenings for six weeks. I feel a million years old. One more
day of being a grandmother and I should have died! Do you know what I'm
going to do? I'm going to stop at Fifth Avenue this minute and buy a
hat that's a thousand times too young for me, and you're going with me
to tell me that it isn't. And then you'll take me somewhere to
dinner--a place with music and pink shades. And then I want to see a
wicked play, preferably with a runway through the center aisle for the
chorus.

And then I want to go somewhere and dance! Get that, dear? Dance!
Tell me, T. A.--tell me the truth: Do you think I'm old, and faded,
and wistful and grandmotherly?"

"I think," said T. A. Buck, "that you're the most beautiful, the most
wonderful, the most adorable woman in the world, and the more foolish
your new hat is and the later we dance the better I'll like it. It has
been awful without you, Emma."

Emma closed her eyes and there came from the depths of her heart a
great sigh of relief, and comfort and gratification.

"Oh, T. A., my dear, it's all very well to drown your identity in the
music of the orchestra, but there's nothing equal to the soul-filling
satisfaction that you get in solo work."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Emma McChesney & Co., by Edna Ferber

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