Mrs. McChesney slammed down the trunk top, locked it, clutched
her samples firmly, and faced the enraged official.

"Go 'way! I haven't time to be arrested this morning. This is
my busy day. Call around this evening."

Whereupon she fled to her waiting cab, leaving behind her a
Brazilian official stunned and raging by turns.

When she returned, happy, triumphant, order-laden, he was
standing there, stunned no longer but raging still. Emma
McChesney had forgotten all about him. The gold-braided
official advanced, mustachios bristling. A volley of Portuguese
burst from his long-pent lips. Emma McChesney glanced behind
her. Her interpreter threw up helpless hands, replying with a
still more terrifying burst of vowels. Bewildered, a little
frightened, Mrs. McChesney stood helplessly by. The official
laid a none too gentle hand on her shoulder. A little group of
lesser officials stood, comic-opera fashion, in the background.
And then Emma McChesney's New York training came to her aid. She
ignored the voluble interpreter. She remained coolly unruffled
by the fusillade of Portuguese. Quietly she opened her hand bag
and plunged her fingers deep, deep therein. Her blue eyes gazed
confidingly up into the Brazilian's snapping black ones, and as
she withdrew her hand from the depths of her purse, there passed
from her white fingers to his brown ones that which is the
Esperanto of the nations, the universal language understood from
Broadway to Brazil. The hand on her shoulder relaxed and fell
away.