Roast Beef, Medium

a summer-evening's stroll. The Pilgrims by whom this forced march is

s 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 s

-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 chicke

e story, which left Emma at

rauss 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

om that love lyric; but if I mig

and shoved it across the table with

ottle. But at its removal her prop was gone. The Dry G

t. Thanks. Wa

s as she glanced up over the top of her Dry Goods Review. The

seen matinee idols, and tailors' supplies salesmen, and Julian Eltinge, but this boy had any male prof

istress 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

picked a peck of pickled pep

McChesney, suddenly, being a person who never trifled with half-way me

. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," he

oad! Why, the trail of bleeding hearts that you must leave all the way fro

y up into the adoring eyes of the waitress who was hovering over

ldly promised his handmaiden,

aren't you?" observed

akes yo

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 s

man leaned forward,

to tell me you

anded Emma McC

look. "Any woman as pretty as you are, and with those eyes, and that

you!" she said calmly, "I'm going to dictate two letters, explaining why business was rotten last week, and

in one of these little townpump burgs. Kill 'em! It can't be done. They die harder than the heroine i

ing to convince a bunch of customers that T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoat has every other skirt in the market looking like a piece

one. "Let's take in all the nickel shows, and

boy across the way with what our best talent calls a long, level look. It was so long and so level that even the ai

o 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. These nickel shows are getting on my nerves. It seems to me that if I have to look at one more Western picture about a fool girl with her hair in a braid riding a show horse in the wilds of Clapham Junction and being rescued

nted he. "Is

here's more to this traveling game than just knocking down on expenses, talking to every pretty woman you meet, an

s 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 dotte

hildren were playing a noisy game, with many shrill cries, and much shouting and laughter. Suddenly, f

d the voice. "May

since Cain was a child playing in the Garden of E

egun a new game, an' I'm leader. Can't w

reed the voice. "But don

d straight ahead into the soft darkness. And if it had been light you could have seen that the bitter lines s

e of command again. "May-

ad 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 th

and sent her dream-though

voice, "I could be crazy a

A strong hand seized her own, which were clasped behind her head. Two warm, eager lips were

ise. She sat very quietly, breathing fast. When she turned at last to look at the boy beside her it seemed that her whit

married kiss-a two-year-ol

handsome young devil, you!"

k. "How did you-what

excited as that about kissing an old stager like me. The chances are you're out of p

e beside him. "Now, listen to me, boy." She le

he handsome young

was married when I was eighteen, and stayed married eight years. I've had my div

ack. "You're not a day over twenty

at you reminded me of my own kid. Every fond mama is gump enough to think that every Greek god she sees looks like her own boy, even if her own happens to squint and have two teeth missing-which mine hasn't, thank the Lord! He's the greatest young-Well, now, loo

rry, on the

's doing evenings? No, you didn't. Well, I'll tell you. She's sitting home, night after night, probably embroidering monograms on your shirt sleeves by way of diversion. And on Saturday night, which is the night when every married woman has the inalienable right to be taken out by her husband, she can listen to the woman in the flat upstairs getting ready to go to the theater. The fact that there's a ceiling between 'em doesn't prevent her

an beside her. But Emma McChesney

r, or if it's some one trying to break into the flat. And she'd rather sit there, scared green, than go back through that long hall to find out. And when Tillie comes home with her young man at eleven o'clock, though she promised not to stay ou

ee every Saturday," he

hings out on the bed. She loves it. She even enjoys getting his bath towels ready, and putting his shaving things where he can lay his hands on 'em, and telling the girl to have dinner ready promptly at six-thirty. It means getting out her good dress that hangs in the closet with a cretonne bag covering it, and her black satin coat, and her hat with the paradise aigrettes that she bought with what she saved out of the housekeeping money. It means her best silk stockings, and her diamond sunburst that he's going to have m

ulate sound from the boy. Bu

ar of this.' But shucks! When he comes home he can't whip the kids for what they did seven weeks before, and that they've forgotten all about, and for what he never saw, and can't imagine. Besides, he wants his comfort when he gets home. He says he wants a little rest and peace, and he's darned if he's going

ly. "How a woman like you can waste her time on the road is mor

fooling with the minced chicken, and the imitation lamb chops of this world, and settle down to plain, everyday, roast beef, medium. That other stuff may tickle your palate for a while, but sooner or later it will turn on you, and ruin your moral digestion. You stick to roast beef, medium. It may sound prosaic, and unimaginative and dry, but you'll fin

the foot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and l

you know what I mean. And I won't ask you to forgive a hound like me. I haven't

grass. I can feel it in my back teeth, and by eleven o'clock it will be camping over my left eye, with its little brothers doing a war dance up the side of my face. And, boy, I'd give last week's commissions if there was some one to whom I had the right to say: 'Henry, wi

on't ask you to forg