"Don't drop any stitches, T. A." With unerring aim she flung
the big pink rose straight at him.

She went about arranging her affairs on the boat like the
business woman that she was. First she made her cabin shipshape.
She placed nearest at hand the books on South America, and the
Spanish-American pocket interpreter. She located her deck chair,
and her seat in the dining-room. Then, quietly, unobtrusively,
and guided by those years spent in meeting men and women face to
face in business, she took thorough, conscientious mental stock
of those others who were to be her fellow travelers for twenty-
three days.

For the most part, the first-class passengers were men. There
were American business men--salesmen, some of them, promoters
others, or representatives of big syndicates shrewd, alert, well
dressed, smooth shaven. Emma McChesney knew that she would gain
valuable information from many of them before the trip was over.
She sighed a little regretfully as she thought of those
smoking-room talks--those intimate, tobacco-mellowed business
talks from which she would be barred by her sex.

There were two engineers, one British, one American, both very
intelligent-looking, both inclined to taciturnity, as is often
the case in men of their profession. They walked a good deal,
and smoked nut-brown, evil-smelling pipes, and stared
unblinkingly across the water.

There were Argentines--whole families of them--Brazilians, too.