dez. And here was Senor
Pages, so near that she could reach out and touch him from her deck
chair. Here was opportunity! A caller who had never been obliged to
knock twice at Emma McChesney's door.

Her methods were so simple that she herself smiled at them. She donned
her choicest suit of white serge that she had been saving for shore
wear. Its skirt had been cut by the very newest trick. Its coat was
the kind to make you go home and get out your own white serge and gaze
at it with loathing. Senorita Pages' eyes leaped to that suit as iron
leaps to the magnet. Emma McChesney, passing her deck chair, detached
the eyes with a neat smile. Why hadn't she spent six months neglecting
Skirts for Spanish? she asked herself, groaning. As she approached her
own deck chair again she risked a bright, "Good morning." Her heart
bounded, stood still, bounded again, as from the lips of the assembled
Pages there issued a combined, courteous, perfectly good American,
"Good morning!"

"You speak English!" Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery and
surprise.

Pages pere made answer.

"Ah, yes, it is necessary. There are many English in Argentina."

A sigh--a fluttering, tremulous sigh of perfect peace and
happiness--welled up from Emma McChesney's heart and escaped through
her smiling lips.

By noon, Senorita Pages had tried on the fascinating coat and secured
the address of its builder. By afternoon, Emma McChesney was showing
the newest embroidery stitch to the slow but docile Senora Pages. Next
morning she was playing shuffleboard with the elegant, indolent Pepe,
and talking North American football and baseball to him. She had not
been Jock McChesney's mother all those years for nothing. She could
discuss sports with the best of them. Young Pages was avidly
interested. Outdoor sports had become the recent fashion among the
rich young Argentines.

The problem of papa Pages was not so easy. Emma McChesney approached
her subject warily, skirting the bypaths of politics, war, climate,
customs--to business. Business!

"But a lady as charming as you can understand nothing of business,"
said Senor Pages. "Business is for your militant sisters."

"But we American women do understand business. Many--many charming
American women are in business."

Senor Pages turned his fine eyes upon her. She had talked most
interestingly, this pretty American woman.

"Perhaps--but pardon me if I think not. A woman cannot