thing, T. A. Promise me that when you come home
for dinner at night, you'll never say, 'Good heavens, I had that for
lunch!'"

III

A CLOSER CORPORATION

Front offices resemble back kitchens in this: they have always an ear
at the keyhole, an eye at the crack, a nose in the air. But

between the ordinary front office and the front office of the T. A.
Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company there was a difference. The
employees at Buck's--from Emil, the errand boy, to old Pop Henderson,
who had started as errand boy himself twenty-five years
before--possessed the quality of loyalty. They were loyal to the
memory of old man Buck, because they had loved and respected him. They
were loyal to Mrs. Emma McChesney, because she was Mrs. Emma McChesney
(which amounts to the same reason). They were loyal to T. A. Buck,
because he was his father's son.

For three weeks the front office had been bewildered. From
bewilderment it passed to worry. A worried, bewildered front office is
not an efficient front office. Ever since Mrs. McChesney had come off
the road, at the death of old T. A. Buck, to assume the secretaryship
of the company which she had served faithfully for ten years, she had
set an example for the entire establishment. She was the pacemaker.
Every day of her life she figuratively pressed the electric button that
set the wheels to whirring. At nine A.M., sharp, she appeared, erect,
brisk, alert, vibrating energy. Usually, the office staff had not yet
swung into its gait. In a desultory way, it had been getting into its
sateen sleevelets, adjusting its eye-shades, uncovering its typewriter,
opening its ledgers, bringing out its files. Then, down the hall, would
come the sound of a firm, light, buoyant step. An electric thrill
would pass through the front office. Then the sunny, sincere, "Good
morning!"

"'Morning, Mrs. McChesney!" the front office would chorus back.

The day had begun for the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company.

Hortense, the blond stenographer (engaged to the shipping-clerk),
noticed it first. The psychology of that is interesting. Hortense knew
that by nine-thirty Mrs. McChesney's desk would be clear and that the
buzzer would summon her. Hortense didn't mind taking dictation from T.
A. Buck, though his method was hesitating and jerky, and he was likely
to employ quite casually a baffling and unaccustomed word, over which
Hortense's scampering pencil would pause, struggle