flashing, restless eyes were never still. The son (Emma heard
them call him Pepe) was barely eighteen, she thought, but quite a
man of the world, with his cigarettes, his drinks, his bold eyes.
She looked at his sallow, pimpled skin, his lean, brown hands,
his lack-luster eyes, and she thought of Jock and was happy.

Mrs. McChesney knew that she might visit the magnificent Buenos
Aires shop of Pages y Hernandez day after day for months without
ever obtaining a glimpse of either Pages or Hernandez. And here
was Senor Pages, so near that she could reach out and touch him
from her deck chair. Here was opportunity! A caller who had
never been obliged to knock twice at Emma McChesney's door.

Her methods were so simple that she herself smiled at them. She
donned her choicest suit of white serge that she had been saving
for shore wear. Its skirt had been cut by the very newest trick.
Its coat was the kind to make you go home and get out your own
white serge and gaze at it with loathing. Senorita Pages' eyes
leaped to that suit as iron leaps to the magnet. Emma McChesney,
passing her deck chair, detached the eyes with a neat smile. Why
hadn't she spent six months neglecting Skirts for Spanish? she
asked herself, groaning. As she approached her own deck chair
again she risked a bright, "Good morning." Her heart bounded,
stood still, bounded again, as from the lips of the assembled
Pages there issued a combined, courteous, perfectly good
American, "Good morning!"

"You speak English!" Emma McChesney's tone expressed flattery
and surprise.