ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM

THE BUSINESS ADVENTURES OF EMMA McCHESNEY

By Edna Ferber

Author of"Dawn O'Hara,""Buttered Side Down,"Etc.

With twenty-seven illustrations by James Montgomery Flagg

{Illustration:"'And they call that thing a petticoat!'"}

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this edition)

I. — ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM

II. — REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK

III. — CHICKENS

IV. — HIS MOTHER'S SON

V. — PINK TIGHTS AND GINGHAMS

VI. — SIMPLY SKIRTS

VII. — UNDERNEATH THE HIGH-CUT VEST

VIII. — CATCHING UP WITH CHRISTMAS

IX. — KNEE-DEEP IN KNICKERS

X. — IN THE ABSENCE OF THE AGENT

FOREWORD

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy.

Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the Menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la, though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe, and sane, and sure. It agrees with you. As you hesitate there sounds in your ear a soft and insinuating Voice.

"You'll find the tongue in aspic very nice today,"purrs the Voice."May I recommend the chicken pie, country style? Perhaps you'd relish something light and tempting. Eggs Benedictine. Very fine. Or some flaked crab meat, perhaps. With a special Russian sauce."

Roast Beef, Medium! How unimaginative it sounds. How prosaic, and dry! You cast the thought of it aside with the contempt that it deserves, and you assume a fine air of the epicure as you order. The re are set before you things encased in pastry; things in frilly paper trousers; things that prick the tongue; sauces that pique the palate. The re are strange vegetable garnishings, cunningly cut. This is not only Food. The se are Viands.

"Everything satisfactory?"inquires the insinuating Voice.

"Yes,"you say, and take a hasty sip of water. That paprika has burned your tongue."Yes. Check, please."

You eye the score, appalled."Look here! Aren't you over-charging!"

"Our regular price,"and you catch a sneer beneath the smugness of the Voice."It is what every one pays, sir."

You reach deep, deep into your pocket, and you pay. And you rise and go, full but not fed. And later as you take your fifth Moral Pepsin Tablet you say Fool! and Fool! and Fool!

When next we dine we are not tempted by the Voice. We are wary of weird sauces. We shun the cunning aspics. We look about at our neighbor's table. He is eating of things French, and Russian and Hungarian. Of food garnished, and garish and greasy. And with a little sigh of Content and resignation we settle down to our Roast Beef, Medium.

E. F.

ILLUSTRATIONS (not available in this edition)

"'And they call that thing a petticoat!'"

"'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,'he announced, glibly"

"'That was a married kiss—a two-year-old married kiss at least'"

"'I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me'"

"'You'll never grow up, Emma McChesney'"

"'We ll, s'long then, Shrimp. See you at eight'"

"'I'm still in a position to enforce that ordinance against pouting'"

"'Son!'echoed the clerk, staring"

"'We ll!'gulped Jock,'those two double-bedded, bloomin', blasted

Bisons—'"

"'Come on out of here and I'll lick the shine off your shoes, you

blue-eyed babe, you!'"

"'You can't treat me with your life's history. I'm going in'"

"'Now, Lillian Russell and cold cream is one; and new potatoes and brown

crocks is another.'"

"'Why, girls, I couldn't hold down a job in a candy factory'"

"'Honestly, I'd wear it myself!'"

"'I've lived petticoats, I've talked petticoats, I've dreamed

petticoats—why, I've even worn the darn things!'"

"And found himself addressing the backs of the letters on the door

marked'Private'."

"'Shut up, you blamed fool! Can't you see the lady's sick?'"

"At his gaze that lady fled, sample-case banging at her knees"

"In the exuberance of his young strength, he picked her up"

"She read it again, dully, as though every selfish word had not already

stamped itself on her brain and heart."

"'Not that you look your age—not by ten years!"'

"'Christmas isn't a season... it's a feeling; and, thank God, I've got

it!'"

"No man will ever appreciate the fine points of this little garment, but

the women—"

"Emma McChesney... I believe in you now! Dad and I both believe in

you."

"It had been a whirlwind day."

"'Emma,'he said,'will you marry me?'"

"'We lcome home!'she cried.'Sketch in the furniture to suit yourself.'"

I. — ROAST BEEF, MEDIUM

The re is a journey compared to which the travels of Bunyan's hero were a summer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march is taken belong to a maligned fraternity, and are known as traveling men. Sample-case in hand, trunk key in pocket, cigar in mouth, brown derby atilt at an Angle of ninety, each young and untried traveler starts on his journey down that road which leads through morasses of chicken a la

Creole, over greasy mountains of queen fritters made doubly perilous by slippery glaciers of rum sauce, into formidable jungles of breaded veal chops threaded by sanguine and deadly streams of tomato gravy, past sluggish mires of dreadful things en casserole, over hills of corned-beef hash, across shaking quagmires of veal glace, plunging into sloughs of slaw, until, haggard, weary, digestion shattered, complexion gone, he reaches the safe haven of roast beef, medium. Once there, he never again strays, although the pompadoured, white-aproned siren sing-songs in his ear the praises of Irish stew, and pork with apple sauce.

Emma McChesney was eating her solitary supper at the Berger house at Three Rivers, Michigan. She had arrived at the Roast Beef haven many years before. She knew the digestive perils of a small town hotel dining-room as a guide on the snow-covered mountain knows each treacherous pitfall and chasm. Ten years on the road had taught her to recognize the deadly snare that lurks in the seemingly calm bosom of minced chicken with cream sauce. Not for her the impenetrable mysteries of a hamburger and onions. It had been a struggle, brief but terrible, from which Emma McChesney had emerged triumphant, her complexion and figure saved.

No more metaphor. On with the story, which left Emma at her safe and solitary supper.

She had the last number of the Dry Goods Review propped up against the vinegar cruet and the Worcestershire, and the salt shaker. Between conscientious, but disinterested mouthfuls of medium roast beef, she was reading the snappy ad set forth by her firm's bitterest competitors, the Strauss Sans-silk Skirt Company. It was a good reading ad. Emma McChesney, who had forgotten more about petticoats than the average skirt salesman ever knew, presently allowed her luke-warm beef to grow cold and flabby as she read. Somewhere in her subconscious mind she realized that the lanky head waitress had placed some one opposite her at the table. Also, subconsciously, she heard him order liver and bacon, with onions. She told herself that as soon as she reached the bottom of the column she'd look up to see who the fool was. She never arrived at the column's end.

"I just hate to tear you away from that love lyric; but if I might trouble you for the vinegar—"

Emma groped for it back of her paper and shoved it across the table without looking up,"—and the Worcester—"

One eye on the absorbing column, she passed the tall bottle. But at its removal her prop was gone. The Dry Goods Review was too weighty for the salt shaker alone.

"—and the salt. Thanks. Warm, isn't it?"

The re was a double vertical frown between Emma McChesney's eyes as she glanced up over the top of her Dry Goods Review. The frown gave way to a half smile. The glance settled into a stare.

"But then, anybody would have stared. He expected it,"she said, afterwards, in telling about it."I've seen matinee idols, and tailors'supplies salesmen, and Julian Eltinge, but this boy had any male professional beauty I ever saw, looking as handsome and dashing as a bowl of cold oatmeal. And he knew it."

Now, in the ten years that she had been out representing T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats Emma McChesney had found it necessary to make a rule or two for herself. In the strict observance of one of these she had become past mistress in the fine art of congealing the warm advances of fresh and friendly salesmen of the opposite sex. But this case was different, she told herself. The man across the table was little more than a boy—an Amazingly handsome, astonishingly impudent, cockily confident boy, who was staring with insolent approval at Emma McChesney's trim, shirt-waisted figure, and her fresh, attractive coloring, and her well-cared-for hair beneath the smart summer hat.

{Illustration:"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,"he announced, glibly.}

"It isn't in human nature to be as good-looking as you are,"spake Emma McChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-way measures."I'll bet you have bad teeth, or an impediment in your speech."

The gorgeous young man smiled. His teeth were perfect."Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,"he announced, glibly."Nothing missing there, is there?"

"Must be your morals then,"retorted Emma McChesney."My! My! And on the road! Why, the trail of bleeding hearts that you must leave all the way from Maine to California would probably make the Red Sea turn white with envy."

The Fresh You ng Kid speared a piece of liver and looked soulfully up into the adoring eyes of the waitress who was hovering over him."Got any nice hot biscuits to-night, girlie?"he inquired.

"I'll get you some; sure,"wildly promised his handmaiden, and disappeared kitchenward.

"Brand new to the road, aren't you?"observed Emma McChesney, cruelly.

"What makes you think—"

"Liver and bacon, hot biscuits, Worcestershire,"elucidated she."No old-timer would commit suicide that way. After you've been out for two or three years you'll stick to the Rock of Gibraltar—roast beef, medium. Oh, I get wild now and then, and order eggs if the girl says she knows the hen that layed'em, but plain roast beef, unchloroformed, is the one best bet. You can't go wrong if you stick to it."

The god-like young man leaned forward, forgetting to eat.

"You don't mean to tell me you're on the road!"

"Why not?"demanded Emma McChesney, briskly.

"Oh, fie, fie!"said the handsome youth, throwing her a languishing look."Any woman as pretty as you are, and with those eyes, and that hair, and figure—Say, Little One, what are you going to do to-night?"

Emma McChesney sugared her tea, and stirred it, slowly. Then she looked up."To-night, you fresh young kid, you!"she said calmly,"I'm going to dictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week, and why it's going to pick up next week, and then I'm going to keep an engagement with a nine-hour beauty sleep."

"Don't get sore at a fellow. You'd take pity on me if you knew how I have to work to kill an evening in one of these little townpump burgs. Kill'em! It can't be done. They die harder than the heroine in a ten, twenty, thirty. From supper to bedtime is twice as long as from breakfast to supper. Honest!"

But Emma McChesney looked inexorable, as women do just before they relent. Said she:"Oh, I don't know. By the time I get through trying to convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoat has every other skirt in the market looking like a piece of Fourth of July bunting that's been left out in the rain, I'm about ready to turn down the spread and leave a call for six-thirty."

"Be a good fellow,"pleaded the unquenchable one."Let's take in all the nickel shows, and then see if we can't drown our sorrows in—er—"

Emma McChesney slipped a coin under her plate, crumpled her napkin, folded her arms on the table, and regarded the boy across the way with what our best talent calls a long, level look. It was so long and so level that even the airiness of the buoyant youngster at whom it was directed began to lessen perceptibly, long before Emma began to talk.

"Tell me, young'un, did any one ever refuse you anything? I thought not. I should think that when you realize what you've got to learn it would scare you to look ahead. I don't expect you to believe me when I tell you I never talk to fresh guys like you, but it's true. I don't know why I'm breaking my rule for you, unless it's because you're so unbelievably good-looking that I'm anxious to know where the blemish is. The Lord don't make'em perfect, you know. I'm going to get out those letters, and then, if it's just the same to you, we'll take a walk. The se nickel shows are getting on my nerves. It seems to me that if I have to look at one more We stern picture about a fool girl with her hair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junction and being rescued from a band of almost-Indians by the handsome, but despised Eastern tenderfoot, or if I see one more of those historical pictures, with the women wearing costumes that are a pass between early Egyptian and late State Street, I know I'll get hysterics and have to be carried shrieking, up the aisle. Let's walk down Main Street and look in the store windows, and up as far as the park and back."

"Great!"assented he."Is there a park?

"I don't know,"replied Emma McChesney,"but there is. And for your own good I'm going to tell you a few things. The re's more to this traveling game than just knocking down on expenses, talking to every pretty woman you meet, and learning to ask for fresh white-bread heels at the Palmer House in Chicago. I'll meet you in the lobby at eight."

Emma McChesney talked steadily, and evenly, and generously, from eight until eight-thirty. She talked from the great storehouse of practical knowledge which she had accumulated in her ten years on the road. She told the handsome young cub many things for which he should have been undyingly thankful. But when they reached the park—the cool, dim, moon-silvered park, its benches dotted with glimpses of white showing close beside a blur of black, Emma McChesney stopped talking. Not only did she stop talking, but she ceased to think of the boy seated beside her on the bench.

In the band-stand, under the arc-light, in the center of the pretty little square, some neighborhood children were playing a noisy game, with many shrill cries, and much shouting and laughter. Suddenly, from one of the houses across the way, a woman's voice was heard, even above the clamor of the children.

"Fred-dee!"called the voice."Maybelle! Come, now."

And a boy's voice answered, as boys'voices have since Cain was a child playing in the Garden of Eden, and as boys'voices will as long as boys are:

"Aw, ma, I ain't a bit sleepy. We just begun a new game, an'I'm leader. Can't we just stay out a couple of minutes more?"

"We ll, five minutes,"agreed the voice."But don't let me call you again."

Emma McChesney leaned back on the rustic bench and clasped her strong, white hands behind her head, and stared straight ahead into the soft darkness. And if it had been light you could have seen that the bitter lines showing faintly about her mouth were outweighed by the sweet and gracious light which was glowing in her eyes.

"Fred-dee!"came the voice of command again."May-belle! This minute, now!"

One by one the flying little figures under the arc-light melted away in the direction of the commanding voice and home and bed. And Emma McChesney forgot all about fresh young kids and featherloom petticoats and discounts and bills of lading and sample-cases and grouchy buyers. After all, it had been her protecting maternal instinct which had been aroused by the boy at supper, although she had not known it then. She did not know it now, for that matter. She was busy remembering just such evenings in her own life—summer evenings, filled with the high, shrill laughter of children at play. She too, had stood in the doorway, making a funnel of her hands, so that her clear call through the twilight might be heard above the cries of the boys and girls. She had known how loath the little feet had been to leave their play, and how they had lagged up the porch stairs, and into the house. Years, whose memory she had tried to keep behind her, now suddenly loomed before her in the dim quiet of the little flower-scented park.