Roast Beef Medium Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK McCHESNEY, MRS. (I placo it in the background because she generally did) swung off the 2:15, crossed the depot platform, and dived into the hotel 'bus. She had to climb over the feet of a fat man in brown and a lean man in black, to do it. Long practise had made her perfect in the art. She knew that the fat man and the thin man were hogging the end seats so that they could be the first to register and get a choice of rooms when the 'bus reached the hotel. The vehicle smelled of straw, and mold, and stables, and dampness, and tobacco, as 'buses have from old Jonas Chuzzlewit's time to this. Nine years on the road had accustomed Emma McChesney's nostrils to 'bus smells. She gazed stolidly out of the window, crossed one leg over the other, remembered that her snug suit-skirt wasn't built for that attitude, uncrossed them again, and caught the delighted and understanding eye of the fat traveling man, who was a symphony in brown ? brown suit, brown oxfords, brown scarf, brown hat, brown-bordered handkerchief just peeping over the edge of his pocket. He looked like a colossal chocolate fudge. " Red-faced, grinning, and a naughty wink ? I'll bet he sells coffins and undertakers' supplies," mused Emma McChesney. " And the other one ? the tall, lank, funereal affair in black ? I suppose his line would be sheet music,, or maybe phonographs. Or perhaps he's a lyceum bureau reader, scheduled to give an evening of humorous readings for the Young- Men's Sunday Evening Club course at the First M. E. Church." During those nine years on the road for the Featherloom Skirt Company Emma McChesney had picked up a side line or two on human nature. She was not surprised to see the fat man in brown and the thin man in black leap out of the 'bus and into the...Read More