"You know the ups and downs to this game," Ed Meyers was saying. "When I met you there in the elevator you looked like you'd lost your last customer. You get pretty disgusted with it all, at times, like the rest of us."

"At that minute," replied Emma McChesney, "I was so disgusted that if some one had called me up on the 'phone and said, 'Hullo, Mrs. McChesney! Will you marry me?' I'd have said: 'Yes. Who is this?'"

"There! That's just it. I don't want to be impolite, or anything like that, Mrs. McChesney, but you're no kid. Not that you look your age— not by ten years! But I happen to know you're teetering somewhere between thirty-six and the next top. Ain't that right?"

"Is that a argument to put to a lady?" remonstrated Abel Fromkin.

Fat Ed Meyers waved the interruption away with a gesture of his strangely slim hands. "This ain't an argument. It's facts. Another ten years on the road, and where'll you be? In the discard. A man of forty-six can keep step with the youngsters, even if it does make him puff a bit. But a woman of forty-six—the road isn't the place for her. She's tired. Tired in the morning; tired at night. She wants her kimono and her afternoon snooze. You've seen some of those old girls on the road. They've come down step by step until you spot 'em, bleached hair, crow's-feet around the eyes, mussy shirt-waist, yellow and red complexion, demonstrating green and lavender gelatine messes in the grocery of some department store. I don't say that a brainy corker of a saleswoman like you would come down like that. But you've got to consider sickness and a lot of other things. Those six weeks last summer with the fever at Glen Rock put a crimp in you, didn't it? You've never been yourself since then. Haven't had a decent chance to rest up."

"No," said Emma McChesney wearily.

"Furthermore, now that old T. A.'s cashed in, how do you know what young Buck's going to do? He don't know shucks about the skirt business. They've got to take in a third party to keep it a close corporation. It was all between old Buck, Buck junior, and old lady Buck. How can you tell whether the new member will want a woman on the road, or not?"

A little steely light hardened the blue of Mrs. McChesney's eyes.

"We'll leave the firm of T. A. Buck out of this discussion, please."

"Oh, very well!" Ed Meyers was unabashed. "Let's talk about Fromkin. He don't object, do you, Abe? It's just like this. He needs your smart head. You need his money. It'll mean a sure thing for you—a share in a growing and substantial business. When you get your road men trained it'll mean that you won't need to go out on the road yourself, except for a little missionary trip now and then, maybe. No more infernal early trains, no more bum hotel grub, no more stuffy, hot hotel rooms, no more haughty lady buyers—gosh, I wish I had the chance!"

Emma McChesney sat very still. Two scarlet spots glowed in her cheeks. "No one appreciates your gift of oratory more than I do, Mr. Meyers. Your flow of language, coupled with your peculiar persuasive powers, make a combination a statue couldn't resist. But I think it would sort of rest me if Mr. Fromkin were to say a word, seeing that it's really his funeral."

Abel Fromkin started nervously, and put his dead cigarette to his lips. "I ain't much of a talker," he said, almost sheepishly. "Meyers, he's got it down fine. I tell you what. I'll be in New York the twenty-first. We can go over the books and papers and the whole business. And I like you should know my wife. And I got a little girl —Would you believe it, that child ain't more as a year old, and says Papa and Mama like a actress!"

"Sure," put in Ed Meyers, disregarding the more intimate family details. "You two get together and fix things up in shape; then you can sign up and have it off your mind so you can enjoy the festive Christmas season."

Emma McChesney had been gazing out of the window to where the street- lamps were reflected in the ice-covered pavements. Now she spoke, still staring out upon the wintry street.

Christmas isn't a season. It's a feeling. And I haven't got it."

"Oh, come now, Mrs. McChesney!" objected Ed Meyers.

With a sudden, quick movement Emma McChesney turned from the window to the little dark man who was watching her so intently. She faced him squarely, as though utterly disregarding Ed Meyers' flattery and banter and cajolery. The little man before her seemed to recognize the earnestness of the moment. He leaned forward a bit attentively.

"If what has been said is true," she began, this ought to be a good thing for me. If I go into it, I'll go in heart, soul, brain, and pocket-book. I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save a quarter or fifty cents. I've always tried to look well dressed and immaculate—"

"You!" exclaimed Ed Meyers. "Why, say, you're what I call a swell dresser. Nothing flashy, understand, or loud, but the quiet, good stuff that spells ready money."

"M-m-m—yes. But it wasn't always so ready. Anyway, I always managed somehow. The boy's at college. Sometimes I wonder—well, that's another story. I've saved, and contrived, and planned ahead for a rainy day. There have been two or three times when I thought it had come. Sprinkled pretty heavily, once or twice. But I've just turned up my coat-collar, tucked my hat under my skirt, and scooted for a tree. And each time it has turned out to be just a summer shower, with the sun coming out bright and warm."

Her frank, clear, honest, blue eyes were plumbing the depths of the black ones. "Those few thousand dollars that you hold so lightly will mean everything to me. They've been my cyclone-cellar. If—"

Through the writing-room sounded a high-pitched, monotonous voice with a note of inquiry in it.

"Mrs. McChesney! Mr. Fraser! Mr. Ludwig! Please! Mrs. McChesney! Mr. Fraser! Mr. Lud—"

"Here, boy!" Mrs. McChesney took the little yellow envelope from the salver that the boy held out to her. Her quick glance rested on the written words. She rose, her face colorless.

"Not bad news?" The two men spoke simultaneously.

"I don't know," said Emma McChesney. "What would you say?"

She handed the slip of paper to Fat Ed Meyers. He read it in silence. Then once more, aloud:

"'Take first train back to New York. Spalding will finish your trip.'"

"Why—say—" began Meyers.

"Well?"

"Why—say—this—this looks as if you were fired!"

"Does, doesn't it?" She smiled.

"Then our little agreement goes?" The two men were on their feet, eager, alert. "That means you'll take Fromkin's offer?"

"It means that our little agreement is off. I'm sorry to disappoint you. I want to thank you both for your trouble. I must have been crazy to listen to you for a minute. I wouldn't have if I'd been myself."

"But that telegram—"

"It's signed, 'T. A. Buck.' I'll take a chance."

The two men stared after her, disappointment and bewilderment chasing across each face.

"Well, I thought I knew women, but—" began Ed Meyers fluently.

Passing the desk, Mrs. McChesney heard her name. She glanced toward the clerk. He was just hanging up the telephone-receiver.

"Baggage-room says the depot just notified 'em your trunks were traced to Columbia City. They're on their way here now."

"Columbia City!" repeated Emma McChesney. "Do you know, I believe I've learned to hate the name of the discoverer of this fair land."

Up in her room she opened the crumpled telegram again, and regarded it thoughtfully before she began to pack her bag.

The thoughtful look was still there when she entered the big bright office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. And with it was another expression that resembled contrition.

"Mr. Buck's waiting for you," a stenographer told her.

Mrs. McChesney opened the door of the office marked "Private."

Two men rose. One she recognized as the firm's lawyer. The other, who came swiftly toward her, was T. A. Buck—no longer junior. There was a new look about him—a look of responsibility, of efficiency, of clear- headed knowledge.

The two clasped hands—a firm, sincere, understanding grip.

Buck spoke first. "It's good to see you. We were talking of you as you came in. You know Mr. Beggs, of course. He has some things to tell you—and so have I. His will be business things, mine will be personal. I got there before father passed away—thank God! But he couldn't speak. He'd anticipated that with his clear-headedness, and he'd written what he wanted to say. A great deal of it was about you. I want you to read that letter later."

"I shall consider it a privilege," said Emma McChesney.

Mr. Beggs waved her toward a chair. She took it in silence. She heard him in silence, his sonorous voice beating upon her brain.

"There are a great many papers and much business detail, but that will be attended to later," began Beggs ponderously. "You are to be congratulated on the position of esteem and trust which you held in the mind of your late employer. By the terms of his will—I'll put it briefly, for the moment—you are offered the secretaryship of the firm of T. A. Buck, Incorporated. Also you are bequeathed thirty shares in the firm. Of course, the company will have to be reorganized. The late Mr. Buck had great trust in your capabilities."

Emma McChesney rose to her feet, her breath coming quickly. She turned to T. A. Buck. "I want you to know—I want you to know—that just before your telegram came I was half tempted to leave the firm. To—"

"Can't blame you," smiled T. A. Buck. "You've had a rotten six months of it, beginning with that illness and ending with those infernal trunks. The road's no place for a woman."



"Nonsense!" flashed Emma McChesney. "I've loved it. I've gloried in it. And I've earned my living by it. Giving it up—don't now think me ungrateful—won't be so easy, I can tell you."

T. A. Buck nodded understandingly. "I know. Father knew too. And I don't want you to let his going from us make any difference in this holiday season. I want you to enjoy it and be happy."

A shade crossed Emma McChesney's face. It was there when the door opened and a boy entered with a telegram. He handed it to Mrs. McChesney. It held ten crisp words:

Changed my darn fool mind. Me for home and mother.

Emma McChesney looked up, her face radiant.

"Christmas isn't a season, Mr. Buck. It's a feeling; and, thank God, I've got it!"



IX

KNEE-DEEP IN KNICKERS

When the column of figures under the heading known as "Profits," and the column of figures under the heading known as "Loss" are so unevenly balanced that the wrong side of the ledger sags, then to the listening stockholders there comes the painful thought that at the next regular meeting it is perilously possible that the reading may come under the heads of Assets and Liabilities.

There had been a meeting in the offices of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York. The quarterly report had had a startlingly lop-sided sound. After it was over Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of the company, followed T. A. Buck, its president, into the big, bright show-room. T. A. Buck's hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His teeth worried a cigar, savagely. Care, that clawing, mouthing hag, perched on his brow, tore at his heart.

He turned to face Emma McChesney.

"Well," he said, bitterly, "it hasn't taken us long, has it? Father's been dead a little over a year. In that time we've just about run this great concern, the pride of his life, into the ground."

Mrs. Emma McChesney, calm, cool, unruffled, scrutinized the harassed man before her for a long minute.

"What rotten football material you would have made, wouldn't you?" she observed.

"Oh, I don't know," answered T. A. Buck, through his teeth. "I can stand as stiff a scrimmage as the next one. But this isn't a game. You take things too lightly. You're a woman. I don't think you know what this means."

Emma McChesney's lips opened as do those of one whose tongue's end holds a quick and stinging retort. Then they closed again. She walked over to the big window that faced the street. When she had stood there a moment, silent, she swung around and came back to where T. A. Buck stood, still wrapped in gloom.

"Maybe I don't take myself seriously. I'd have been dead ten years ago if I had. But I do take my job seriously. Don't forget that for a minute. You talk the way a man always talks when his pride is hurt."

"Pride! It isn't that."

"Oh, yes, it is. I didn't sell T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats on the road for almost ten years without learning a little something about men and business. When your father died, and I learned that he had shown his appreciation of my work and loyalty by making me secretary of this great company, I didn't think of it as a legacy—a stroke of good fortune."

"No?"

"No. To me it was a sacred trust—something to be guarded, nursed, cherished. And now you say we've run this concern into the ground. Do you honestly think that?"

T. A. shrugged impotent shoulders. "Figures don't lie." He plunged into another fathom of gloom. "Another year like this and we're done for."

Emma McChesney came over and put one firm hand on T. A. Buck's drooping shoulder. It was a strange little act for a woman—the sort of thing a man does when he would hearten another man.

"Wake up!" she said, lightly. "Wake up, and listen to the birdies sing. There isn't going to be another year like this. Not if the planning, and scheming, and brain-racking that I've been doing for the last two or three months mean anything."

T. A. Buck seated himself as one who is weary, body and mind.

"Got another new one?"

Emma McChesney regarded him a moment thoughtfully. Then she stepped to the tall show-case, pushed back the sliding glass door, and pointed to the rows of brilliant-hued petticoats that hung close-packed within.

"Look at 'em!" she commanded, disgust in her voice. "Look at 'em!"

T. A. Buck raised heavy, lack-luster eyes and looked. What he saw did not seem to interest him. Emma McChesney drew from the rack a skirt of king's blue satin messaline and held it at arm's length.

"And they call that thing a petticoat! Why, fifteen years ago the material in this skirt wouldn't have made even a fair-sized sleeve."

T. A. Buck regarded the petticoat moodily. "I don't see how they get around in the darned things. I honestly don't see how they wear 'em."

"That's just it. They don't wear 'em. There you have the root of the whole trouble."

"Oh, nonsense!" disputed T. A. "They certainly wear something—some sort of an—"

"I tell you they don't. Here. Listen. Three years ago our taffeta skirts ran from thirty-six to thirty-eight yards to the dozen. We paid from ninety cents to one dollar five a yard. Now our skirts run from twenty-five to twenty-eight yards to the dozen. The silk costs us from fifty to sixty cents a yard. Silk skirts used to be a luxury. Now they're not even a necessity."

"Well, what's the answer? I've been pondering some petticoat problems myself. I know we've got to sell three skirts to-day to make the profit that we used to make on one three years ago."

Emma McChesney had the brave-heartedness to laugh. "This skirt business reminds me of a game we used to play when I was a kid. We called it Going to Jerusalem, I think. Anyway, I know each child sat in a chair except the one who was It. At a signal everybody had to get up and change chairs. There was a wild scramble, in which the one who was It took part. When the burly-burly was over some child was always chairless, of course. He had to be It. That's the skirt business to- day. There aren't enough chairs to go round, and in the scramble somebody's got to be left out. And let me tell you, here and now, that the firm of T. A. Buck, Featherloom Petticoats, is not going to be It."

T. A. rose as wearily as he had sat down. Even the most optimistic of watchers could have discerned no gleam of enthusiasm on his face.

"I thought," he said listlessly, "that you and I had tried every possible scheme to stimulate the skirt trade."

"Every possible one, yes," agreed Mrs. McChesney, sweetly. "And now it's time to try the impossible. The possibilities haven't worked. My land! I could write a book on the Decline and Fall of the Petticoat, beginning with the billowy white muslin variety, and working up to the present slinky messaline affair. When I think of those dear dead days of the glorious—er—past, when the hired girl used to complain and threaten to leave because every woman in the family had at least three ruffled, embroidery-flounced white muslin petticoats on the line on Mondays—"

The lines about T. A. Buck's mouth relaxed into a grim smile.

"Remember that feature you got them to run in the Sunday Sphere? The one headed 'Are Skirts Growing Fuller, and Where?'"

"Do I remember it!" wailed Emma McChesney. "And can I ever forget the money we put into that fringed model we called the Carmencita! We made it up so it could retail for a dollar ninety-five, and I could have sworn that the women would maim each other to get to it. But it didn't go. They won't even wear fringe around their ankles."

T. A.'s grim smile stretched into a reminiscent grin. "But nothing in our whole hopeless campaign could touch your Municipal Purity League agitation for the abolition of the form-hugging skirt. You talked public morals until you had A. Comstock and Lucy Page Gaston looking like Parisian Apaches."

A little laugh rippled up to Emma McChesney's lips, only to die away to a sigh. She shook her head in sorrowful remembrance.

"Yes. But what good did it do? The newspapers and magazines did take it up, but what happened? The dressmakers and tailors, who are charging more than ever for their work, and putting in half as much material, got together and knocked my plans into a cocked hat. In answer to those snap-shots showing what took place every time a woman climbed a car step, they came back with pictures of the styles of '61, proving that the street-car effect is nothing to what happened to a belle of '61 if she chanced to sit down or get up too suddenly in the hoop-skirt days."

They were both laughing now, like a couple of children. "And, oh, say!" gasped Emma, "remember Moe Selig, of the Fine-Form Skirt Company, trying to get the doctors to state that hobble skirts were making women knock-kneed! Oh, mercy!"

But their laugh ended in a little rueful silence. It was no laughing matter, this situation. T. A. Buck shrugged his shoulders, and began a restless pacing up and down. "Yep. There you are. Meanwhile—"

"Meanwhile, women are still wearing 'em tight, and going petticoatless."

Suddenly T. A. stopped short in his pacing and fastened his surprised and interested gaze on the skirt of the trim and correct little business frock that sat so well upon Emma McChesney's pretty figure.

"Why, look at that!" he exclaimed, and pointed with one eager finger.

"Mercy!" screamed Emma McChesney. "What is it? Quick! A mouse?"

T. A. Buck shook his head, impatiently. "Mouse! Lord, no! Plaits!"

"Plaits!"

She looked down, bewildered.

"Yes. In. your skirt. Three plaits at the front-left, and three in the back. That's new, isn't it? If outer skirts are being made fuller, then it follows—"

"It ought to follow," interrupted Emma McChesney, "but it doesn't. It lags way behind. These plaits are stitched down. See? That's the fiendishness of it. And the petticoat underneath—if there is one— must be just as smooth, and unwrinkled, and scant as ever. Don't let 'em fool you."

Buck spread his palms with a little gesture of utter futility.

"I'm through. Out with your scheme. We're ready for it. It's our last card, whatever it is."

There was visible on Emma McChesney's face that little tightening of the muscles, that narrowing of the eyelids which betokens intense earnestness; the gathering of all the forces before taking a momentous step. Then, as quickly, her face cleared. She shook her head with a little air of sudden decision.

"Not now. Just because it's our last card I want to be sure that I'm playing it well. I'll be ready for you to-morrow morning in my office. Come prepared for the jolt of your young life."

For the first time since the beginning of the conversation a glow of new courage and hope lighted up T. A. Buck's good-looking features. His fine eyes rested admiringly upon Emma McChesney standing there by the great show-case. She seemed to radiate energy. alertness, confidence.

"When you begin to talk like that," he said, "I always feel as though I could take hold in a way to make those famous jobs that Hercules tackled look like little Willie's chores after school."

"Fine!" beamed Emma McChesney. "Just store that up, will you? And don't let it filter out at your finger-tips when I begin to talk to- morrow."

"We'll have lunch together, eh? And talk it over then sociably."

Mrs. McChesney closed the glass door of the case with a bang.

"No, thanks. My office at 9:30."

T. A. Buck followed her to the door. "But why not lunch? You never will take lunch with me. Ever so much more comfortable to talk things over that way—"

"When I talk business," said Emma McChesney, pausing at the threshold, "I want to be surrounded by a business atmosphere. I want the scene all set—one practical desk, two practical chairs, one telephone, one letter-basket, one self-filling fountain-pen, et cetera. And when I lunch I want to lunch, with nothing weightier on my mind than the question as to whether I'll have chicken livers saute or creamed sweetbreads with mushrooms."

"That's no reason," grumbled T. A. "That's an excuse."

"It will have to do, though," replied Mrs. McChesney abruptly, and passed out as he held the door open for her. He was still standing in the doorway after her trim, erect figure had disappeared into the little office across the hail.

The little scarlet leather clock on Emma McChesney's desk pointed to 9:29 A.M. when there entered her office an immaculately garbed, miraculously shaven, healthily rosy youngish-middle-aged man who looked ten years younger than the harassed, frowning T. A. Buck with whom she had almost quarreled the evening before. Mrs. McChesney was busily dictating to a sleek little stenographer. The sleek little stenographer glanced up at T. A. Buck's entrance. The glance, being a feminine one, embraced all of T. A.'s good points and approved them from the tips of his modish boots to the crown of his slightly bald head, and including the creamy-white flower that reposed in his buttonhole.

"'Morning!" said Emma McChesney, looking up briefly. "Be with you in a minute. ...and in reply would say we regret that you have had trouble with No. 339. It is impossible to avoid pulling at the seams in the lower-grade silk skirts when they are made up in the present scant style. Our Mr. Spalding warned you of this at the time of your purchase. We will not under any circumstances consent to receive the goods if they are sent back on our hands. Yours sincerely. That'll be all, Miss Casey."

She swung around to face her visitor as the door closed. If T. A. Buck looked ten years younger than he had the afternoon before, Emma McChesney undoubtedly looked five years older. There were little, worried, sagging lines about her eyes and mouth.

T. A. Buck's eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little stenographer had carried away with her.

"Good Lord! It looks as though you had stayed down here all night."

Emma McChesney smiled a little wearily. "Not quite that. But I was here this morning in time to greet the night watchman. Wanted to get my mail out of the way." Her eyes searched T. A. Buck's serene face. Then she leaned forward, earnestly.

"Haven't you seen the morning paper?"

"Just a mere glance at 'em. Picked up Burrows on the way down, and we got to talking. Why?"

"The Rasmussen-Welsh Skirt Company has failed. Liabilities three hundred thousand. Assets one hundred thousand."

"Failed! Good God!" All the rosy color, all the brisk morning freshness had vanished from his face. "Failed! Why, girl, I thought that concern was as solid as Gibraltar." He passed a worried hand over his head. "That knocks the wind out of my sails."

"Don't let it. Just say that it fills them with a new breeze. I'm all the more sure that the time is ripe for my plan."

T. A. Buck took from a vest pocket a scrap of paper and a fountain pen, slid down in his chair, crossed his legs, and began to scrawl meaningless twists and curlycues, as was his wont when worried or deeply interested.

"Are you as sure of this scheme of yours as you were yesterday?"

"Sure," replied Emma McChesney, briskly. Sartin-sure."

"Then fire away."

Mrs. McChesney leaned forward, breathing a trifle fast. Her eyes were fastened on her listener.

"Here's the plan. We'll make Featherloom Petticoats because there still are some women who have kept their senses. But we'll make them as a side line. The thing that has got to keep us afloat until full skirts come in again will be a full and complete line of women's satin messaline knickerbockers made up to match any suit or gown, and a full line of pajamas for women and girls. Get the idea? Scant, smart, trim little taupe-gray messaline knickers for a taupe gray suit, blue messaline for blue suits, brown messaline for brown—"

T. A. Buck stared, open-mouthed, the paper on which he had been scrawling fluttering unnoticed to the floor.

"Look here!" he interrupted. "Is this supposed to be humorous?"

"And," went on Emma McChesney, calmly, "in our full and complete, not to say nifty line of women's pajamas—pink pajamas, blue pajamas, violet pajamas, yellow pajamas, white silk—"

T. A. Buck stood up. "I want to say," he began, "that if you are jesting, I think this is a mighty poor time to joke. And if you are serious I can only deduce from it that this year of business worry and responsibility has been too much for you. I'm sure that if you were—"

"That's all right," interrupted Emma McChesney. "Don't apologize. I purposely broke it to you this way, when I might have approached it gently. You've done just what I knew you'd do, so it's all right. After you've thought it over, and sort of got chummy with the idea, you'll be just as keen on it as I am."

"Never!"

"Oh, yes, you will. It's the knickerbocker end of it that scares you. Nothing new or startling about pajamas, except that more and more women are wearing 'em, and that no girl would dream of going away to school without her six sets of pajamas. Why, a girl in a regulation nightie at one of their midnight spreads would be ostracized. Of course I've thought up a couple of new kinks in 'em—new ways of cutting and all that, and there's one model—a washable crepe, for traveling, that doesn't need to be pressed—but I'll talk about that later."

T. A. Buck was trying to put in a word of objection, but she would have none of it. But at Emma McChesney's next words his indignation would brook no barriers.

"Now," she went on, "the feature of the knickerbockers will be this: They've got to be ready for the boys' spring trip, and in all the larger cities, especially in the hustling Middle-Western towns, and along the coast, too, I'm planning to have the knickerbockers introduced at private and exclusive exhibitions, and worn by—get this, please—worn by living models. One big store in each town, see? Half a dozen good-looking girls—"

"Never!" shouted T. A. Buck, white and shaking. "Never! This firm has always had a name for dignity, solidness, conservatism—"

"Then it's just about time it lost that reputation. It's all very well to hang on to your dignity when you're on solid ground, but when you feel things slipping from under you the thing to do is to grab on to anything that'll keep you on your feet for a while at least. I tell you the women will go wild over this knickerbocker idea. They've been waiting for it."

"It's a wild-cat scheme," disputed Buck hotly. "It's a drowning man's straw, and just about as helpful. I'm a reasonable man—"

"All unreasonable men say that," smiled Emma McChesney.

"—I'm a reasonable man, I say. And heaven knows I have the interest of this firm at heart. But this is going too far. If we're going to smash we'll go decently, and with our name untarnished. Pajamas are bad enough. But when it comes to the firm of T. A. Buck being represented by—by—living model hussies stalking about in satin tights like chorus girls, why—"

In Emma McChesney's alert, electric mind there leapt about a dozen plans for winning this man over. For win him she would, in the end. It was merely a question of method. She chose the simplest. There was a set look about her jaw. Her eyes flashed. Two spots of carmine glowed in her cheeks.

"I expected just this," she said. "And I prepared for it." She crossed swiftly to her desk, opened a drawer, and took out a flat package. "I expected opposition. That's why I had these samples made up to show you. I designed them myself, and tore up fifty patterns before I struck one that suited me. Here are the pajamas."

She lifted out a dainty, shell-pink garment, and shook it out before the half-interested, half-unwilling eyes of T. A. Buck.

"This is the jacket. Buttons on the left; see? Instead of the right, as it would in a man's garment. Semi-sailor collar, with knotted soft silk scarf. Oh, it's just a little kink, but they'll love it. They're actually becoming. I've tried 'em. Notice the frogs and cord. Pretty neat, yes? Slight flare at the hips. Makes 'em set and hang right. Perfectly straight, like a man's coat."

T. A. Buck eyed the garments with a grudging admiration.

"Oh, that part of it don't sound so unreasonable, although I don't believe there is much of a demand for that kind of thing. But the other—-the—the knickerbocker things—that's not even practical. It will make an ugly garment, and the women who would fall for a fad like that wouldn't be of the sort to wear an ugly piece of lingerie. It isn't to be thought of seriously—"

Emma McChesney stepped to the door of the tiny wash-room off her office and threw it open.

"Miss La Noyes! We're ready for you."

And there emerged from the inner room a trim, lithe, almost boyishly slim figure attired in a bewitchingly skittish-looking garment consisting of knickerbockers and snug brassiere of king's blue satin messaline. Dainty black silk stockings and tiny buckled slippers set off the whole effect.

"Miss La Noyes," said Emma McChesney, almost solemnly, "this is Mr. T. A. Buck, president of the firm. Miss La Noyes, of the 'Gay Social Whirl' company."

Miss La Noyes bowed slightly and rested one white hand at her side in an attitude of nonchalant ease.

"Pleased, I'm shaw!" she said, in a clear, high voice.

And, "Charmed," replied T. A. Buck, his years and breeding standing him in good stead now.

Emma McChesney laid a kindly hand on the girl's shoulder. "Turn slowly, please. Observe the absence of unnecessary fulness about the hips, or at the knees. No wrinkles to show there. No man will ever appreciate the fine points of this little garment, but the women!—To the left, Miss La Noyes. You'll see it fastens snug and trim with a tiny clasp just below the knees. This garment has the added attraction of being fastened to the upper garment, a tight satin brassiere. The single, unattached garment is just as satisfactory, however. Women are wearing plush this year. Not only for the street, but for evening dresses. I rather think they'll fancy a snappy little pair of yellow satin knickers under a gown of the new orange plush. Or a taupe pair, under a gray street suit. Or a natty little pair of black satin, finished and piped in white satin, to be worn with a black and white shopping costume. Why, I haven't worn a petticoat since I—"

"Do you mean to tell me," burst from the long-pent T. A. Buck, "that you wear 'em too?"

"Crazy about 'em. Miss La Noyes, will you just slip on your street skirt, please?"

She waited in silence until the demure Miss La Noyes reappeared. A narrow, straight-hanging, wrinkleless cloth skirt covered the much discussed under-garment. "Turn slowly, please. Thanks. You see, Mr. Buck? Not a wrinkle. No bunchiness. No lumps. No crawling up about the knees. Nothing but ease, and comfort, and trim good looks."

T. A. Buck passed his hand over his head in a dazed, helpless gesture. There was something pathetic in his utter bewilderment and helplessness in contrast with Emma McChesney's breezy self-confidence, and the show-girl's cool poise and unconcern.

"Wait a minute," he murmured, almost pleadingly. "Let me ask a couple of questions, will you?"

"Questions? A hundred. That proves you're interested."

"Well, then, let me ask this young lady the first one. Miss—er—La Noyes, do you honestly and truly like this garment? Would you buy one if you saw it in a shop window?"

Miss La Noyes' answer came trippingly and without hesitation. She did not even have to feel of her back hair first.

"Say, I'd go without my lunch for a week to get it. Mrs. McChesney says I can have this pair. I can't wait till our prima donna sees 'em. She'll hate me till she's got a dozen like 'em."

"Next!" urged Mrs. McChesney, pleasantly.

But T. A. Buck shook his head. "That's all. Only—"

Emma McChesney patted Miss La Noyes lightly on the shoulder, and smiled dazzlingly upon her. "Run along, little girl. You've done beautifully. And many thanks."

Miss La Noyes, appearing in another moment dressed for the street, stopped at the door to bestow a frankly admiring smile upon the abstracted president of the company, and a grateful one upon its pink- cheeked secretary.

"Hope you'll come and see our show some evening. You won't know me at first, because I wear a blond wig in the first scene. Third from the left, front row." And to Mrs. McChesney: "I cer'nly did hate to get up so early this morning, but after you're up it ain't so fierce. And it cer'nly was easy money. Thanks."



Emma McChesney glanced quickly at T. A., saw that he was pliant enough for the molding process, and deftly began to shape, and bend, and smooth and pat.

"Let's sit down, and unravel the kinks in our nerves. Now, if you do favor this new plan—oh, I mean after you've given it consideration, and all that! Yes, indeed. But if you do, I think it would be good policy to start the game in—say—Cleveland. The Kaufman-Oster Company of Cleveland have a big, snappy, up-to-the-minute store. We'll get them to send out announcement cards. Something neat and flattering- looking. See? Little stage all framed up. Scene set to show a bedroom or boudoir. Then, thin girls, plump girls, short girls, high girls. They'll go through all the paces. We won't only show the knickerbockers: we demonstrate how the ordinary petticoat bunches and crawls up under the heavy plush and velvet top skirt. We'll show 'em in street clothes, evening clothes, afternoon frocks. Each one in a different shade of satin knicker. And silk stockings and cunning little slippers to match. The store will stand for that. It's a big ad for them, too."

Emma McChesney's hair was slightly tousled. Her cheeks were carmine. Her eyes glowed.

"Don't you see! Don't you get it! Can't you feel how the thing's going to take hold?"

"By Gad!" burst from T. A. Buck, "I'm darned if I don't believe you're right—almost—But are you sure that you believe—"

Emma McChesney brought one little white fist down into the palm of the other hand. "Sure? Why, I'm so sure that when I shut my eyes I can see T. A. Senior sitting over there in that chair, tapping the side of his nose with the edge of his tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses, and nodding his head, with his features all screwed up like a blessed old gargoyle, the way he always did when something tickled him. That's how sure I am."

T. A. Buck stood up abruptly. He shrugged his shoulders. His face looked strangely white and drawn. "I'll leave it to you. I'll do my share of the work. But I'm not more than half convinced, remember."

"That's enough for the present," answered Emma McChesney, briskly. "Well, now, suppose we talk machinery and girls, and cutters for a while."

Two months later found T. A. Buck and his sales-manager, both shirt- sleeved, both smoking nervously, as they marked, ticketed, folded, arranged. They were getting out the travelers' spring lines. Entered Mrs. McChesney, and stood eying them, worriedly. It was her dozenth visit to the stock-room that morning. A strange restlessness seemed to trouble her. She wandered from office to show-room, from show-room to factory.

"What's the trouble?" inquired T. A. Buck, squinting up at her through a cloud of cigar smoke.

"Oh, nothing," answered Mrs. McChesney, and stood fingering the piles of glistening satin garments, a queer, faraway look in her eyes. Then she turned and walked listlessly toward the door. There she encountered Spalding—Billy Spalding, of the coveted Middle-Western territory, Billy Spalding, the long-headed, quick-thinking; Spalding, the persuasive, Spalding the mixer, Spalding on whom depended the fate of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Knickerbocker and Pajama.

"'Morning! When do you start out?" she asked him.

"In the morning. Gad, that's some line, what? I'm itching to spread it. You're certainly a wonder-child, Mrs. McChesney. Why, the boys—"

Emma McChesney sighed, somberly. "That line does sort of—well, tug at your heart-strings, doesn't it?" She smiled, almost wistfully. "Say, Billy, when you reach the Eagle House at Waterloo, tell Annie, the head-waitress to rustle you a couple of Mrs. Traudt's dill pickles. Tell her Mrs. McChesney asked you to. Mrs. Traudt, the proprietor's wife, doles 'em out to her favorites. They're crisp, you know, and firm, and juicy, and cold, and briny."

Spalding drew a sibilant breath. "I'll be there!" he grinned. "I'll be there!"

But he wasn't. At eight the next morning there burst upon Mrs. McChesney a distraught T. A. Buck.

"Hear about Spalding?" he demanded.

"Spalding? No."

"His wife 'phoned from St. Luke's. Taken with an appendicitis attack at midnight. They operated at five this morning. One of those had-it- been-twenty-four-hours-later-etc. operations. That settles us."

"Poor kid," replied Emma McChesney. "Rough on him and his brand-new wife."

"Poor kid! Yes. But how about his territory? How about our new line? How about—"

"Oh, that's all right," said Emma McChesney, cheerfully.

"I'd like to know how! We haven't a man equal to the territory. He's our one best bet."

"Oh, that's all right," said Mrs. McChesney again, smoothly.

A little impatient exclamation broke from T. A. Buck. At that Emma McChesney smiled. Her new listlessness and abstraction seemed to drop from her. She braced her shoulders, and smiled her old sunny, heartening smile.

"I'm going out with that line. I'm going to leave a trail of pajamas and knickerbockers from Duluth to Canton."

"You! No, you won't!" A dull, painful red had swept into T. A. Buck's face. It was answered by a flood of scarlet in Mrs. McChesney's countenance.

"I don't get you," she said. "I'm afraid you don't realize what this trip means. It's going to be a fight. They'll have to be coaxed and bullied and cajoled, and reasoned with. It's going to be a 'show-me' trip."

T. A. Buck took a quick step forward. "That's just why. I won't have you fighting with buyers, taking their insults, kowtowing to them, salving them. It—it isn't woman's work."

Emma McChesney was sorting the contents of her desk with quick, nervous fingers. "I'll. get the Twentieth Century," she said, over her shoulder. "Don't argue, please. If it's no work for a woman then I suppose it follows that I'm unwomanly. For ten years I traveled this country selling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. My first trip on the road I was in the twenties—and pretty, too. I'm a woman of thirty-seven now. I'll never forget that first trip—the heartbreaks, the insults I endured, the disappointments, the humiliation, until they understood that I meant business—strictly business. I'm tired of hearing you men say that this and that and the other isn't woman's work. Any work is woman's work that a woman can do well. I've given the ten best years of my life to this firm. Next to my boy at school it's the biggest thing in my life. Sometimes it swamps even him. Don't come to me with that sort of talk." She was locking drawers, searching pigeon-holes, skimming files. "This is my busy day." She arose, and shut her desk with a bang, locked it, and turned a flushed and beaming face toward T. A. Buck, as he stood frowning before her.



"Your father believed in me—from the ground up. We understood each other, he and I. You've learned a lot in the last year and a half, T. A. Junior-that-was, but there's one thing you haven't mastered. When will you learn to believe in Emma McChesney?"

She was out of the office before he had time to answer, leaving him standing there.

In the dusk of a late winter evening just three weeks later, a man paused at the door of the unlighted office marked "Mrs. McChesney." He looked about a moment, as though dreading detection. Then he opened the door, stepped into the dim quiet of the little room, and closed the door gently after him. Everything in the tiny room was quiet, neat, orderly. It seemed to possess something of the character of its absent owner. The intruder stood there a moment, uncertainly, looking about him.

Then he took a step forward and laid one hand on the back of the empty chair before the closed desk. He shut his eyes and it seemed that he felt her firm, cool, reassuring grip on his fingers as they clutched the wooden chair. The impression was so strong that he kept his eyes shut, and they were still closed when his voice broke the silence of the dim, quiet little room.

"Emma McChesney," he was saying aloud, "Emma McChesney, you great big, fine, brave, wonderful woman, you! I believe in you now! Dad and I both believe in you."



X

IN THE ABSENCE OF THE AGENT

This is a love-story. But it is a love-story with a logical ending. Which means that in the last paragraph no one has any one else in his arms. Since logic and love have long been at loggerheads, the story may end badly. Still, what love passages there are shall be left intact. There shall be no trickery. There shall be no running breathless, flushed, eager-eyed, to the very gateway of Love's garden, only to bump one's nose against that baffling, impregnable, stone-wall phrase of "let us draw a veil, dear reader." This is the story of the love of a man for a woman, a mother for her son, and a boy for a girl. And there shall be no veil.

Since 8 A.M., when she had unlocked her office door, Mrs. Emma McChesney had been working in bunches of six. Thus, from twelve to one she had dictated six letters, looked up memoranda, passed on samples of petticoat silk, fired the office-boy, wired Spalding out in Nebraska, and eaten her lunch. Emma McChesney was engaged in that nerve-racking process known as getting things out of the way. When Emma McChesney aimed to get things out of the way she did not use a shovel; she used a road-drag.

Now, at three-thirty, she shut the last desk-drawer with a bang, locked it, pushed back the desk-phone, discovered under it the inevitable mislaid memorandum, scanned it hastily, tossed the scrap of paper into the brimming waste-basket, and, yawning, raised her arms high above her head. The yawn ended, her arms relaxed, came down heavily, and landed her hands in her lap with a thud. It had been a whirlwind day. At that moment most of the lines in Emma McChesney's face slanted downward.

But only for that moment. The next found her smiling. Up went the corners of her mouth! Out popped her dimples! The laugh-lines appeared at the corners of her eyes. She was still dimpling like an anticipatory child when she had got her wraps from the tiny closet, and was standing before the mirror, adjusting her hat.



The hat was one of those tiny, pert, head-hugging trifles that only a very pretty woman can wear. A merciless little hat, that gives no quarter to a blotched skin, a too large nose, colorless eyes. Emma McChesney stood before the mirror, the cruel little hat perched atop her hair, ready to give it the final and critical bash which should bring it down about her ears where it belonged. But even now, perched grotesquely atop her head as it was, you could see that she was going to get away with it.

It was at this critical moment that the office door opened, and there entered T. A. Buck, president of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat and Lingerie Company. He entered smiling, leisurely, serene-eyed, as one who anticipates something pleasurable. At sight of Emma McChesney standing, hatted before the mirror, the pleasurable look became less confident.

"Hello!" said T. A. Buck. "Whither?" and laid a sheaf of businesslike- looking papers on the top of Mrs. McChesney's well cleared desk.

Mrs. McChesney, without turning, performed the cramming process successfully, so that her hat left only a sub-halo of fluffy bright hair peeping out from the brim.

Then, "Playing hooky," she said. "Go 'way."

T. A. Buck picked up the sheaf of papers and stowed them into an inside coat-pocket. "As president of this large and growing concern," he said, "I want to announce that I'm going along."

Emma McChesney adjusted her furs. "As secretary of said firm I rise to state that you're not invited."

T. A. Buck, hands in pockets, stood surveying the bright-eyed woman before him. The pleasurable expression had returned to his face.

"If the secretary of the above-mentioned company has the cheek to play hooky at 3:30 P.M. in the middle of November, I fancy the president can demand to know where she's going, and then go too."

Mrs. McChesney unconcernedly fastened the clasp of her smart English glove.

"Didn't you take two hours for lunch? Had mine off the top of my desk. Ham sandwich and a glass of milk. Dictated six letters between bites and swallows."

A frown of annoyance appeared between T. A. Buck's remarkably fine eyes. He came over to Mrs. McChesney and looked down at her.

"Look here, you'll kill yourself. It's all very well to be interested in one's business, but I draw the line at ruining my digestion for it. Why in Sam Hill don't you take a decent hour at least?"

"Only bricklayers can take an hour for lunch," retorted Emma McChesney. "When you get to be a lady captain of finance you can't afford it."

She crossed to her desk and placed her fingers on the electric switch. The desk-light cast a warm golden glow on the smart little figure in the trim tailored suit, the pert hat, the shining furs. She was rosy- cheeked and bright-eyed as a schoolgirl. There was about her that vigor, and glow, and alert assurance which bespeaks congenial work, sound sleep, healthy digestion, and a sane mind. She was as tingling, and bracing, and alive, and antiseptic as the crisp, snappy November air outdoors.

T. A. Buck drew a long breath as he looked at her.

"Those are devastating clothes," he remarked. "D'you know, until now I always had an idea that furs weren't becoming to women. Make most of 'em look stuffy. But you—"

Emma McChesney glanced down at the shining skins of muff and scarf. She stroked them gently and lovingly with her gloved hand.

"M-m-m-m! These semi-precious furs are rather satisfactory—until you see a woman in sealskin and sables. Then you want to use 'em for a hall rug."

T. A. Buck stepped within the radius of the yellow light, so that its glow lighted up his already luminous eyes—eyes that had a trick of translucence under excitement.

"Sables and sealskin," repeated T. A. Buck, his voice vibrant. "If it's those you want, you can—"

Snap! went the electric switch under Emma McChesney's fingers. It was as decisive as a blow in the face. She walked to the door. The little room was dim.

"I'm sending my boy through college with my sealskin-and-sable fund," she said crisply; "and I'm to meet him at 4:30."

"Oh, that's your appointment!" Relief was evident in T. A. Buck's tone.

Emma McChesney shook a despairing head. "For impudent and unquenchable inquisitiveness commend me to a man! Here! If you must know, though I intended it as a surprise when it was finished and furnished—I'm going to rent a flat, a regular six-room, plenty-of-closets flat, after ten years of miserable hotel existence. Jock's running over for two days to approve it. I ought to have waited until the holidays, so he wouldn't miss classes; but I couldn't bear to. I've spent ten Thanksgivings, and ten Christmases, and ten New Years in hotels. Hell has no terrors for me."

They were walking down the corridor together.

"Take me along—please!" pleaded T. A. Buck, like a boy. "I know all about flats, and gas-stoves, and meters, and plumbing, and everything!"

"You!" scoffed Emma McChesney, "with your five-story house and your summer home in the mountains!"

"Mother won't hear of giving up the house. I hate it myself. Bathrooms in those darned old barracks are so cold that a hot tub is an icy plunge before you get to it." They had reached the elevator. A stubborn look appeared about T. A. Buck's jaw. "I'm going!" he announced, and scudded down the hail to his office door. Emma McChesney pressed the elevator-button. Before the ascending car showed a glow of light in the shaft T. A. Buck appeared with hat, gloves, stick.

"I think the car's downstairs. We'll run up in it. What's the address? Seventies, I suppose?"

Emma McChesney stepped out of the elevator and turned. "Car! Not I! If you're bound to come with me you'll take the subway. They're asking enough for that apartment as it is. I don't intend to drive up in a five-thousand-dollar motor and have the agent tack on an extra twenty dollars a month."

T. . Buck smiled with engaging agreeableness. "Subway it is," he said. "Your presence would turn even a Bronx train into a rose-garden."

Twelve minutes later the new apartment building, with its cream-tile and red-brick Louis Somethingth facade, and its tan brick and plaster Michael-Dougherty-contractor back, loomed before them, soaring even above its lofty neighbors. On the door-step stood a maple-colored giant in a splendor of scarlet, and gold braid, and glittering buttons. The great entrance door was opened for them by a half-portion duplicate of the giant outside. In the foyer was splendor to grace a palace hall. There were great carved chairs. There was a massive oaken table. There were rugs, there were hangings, there were dim-shaded lamps casting a soft glow upon tapestry and velours.

Awaiting the pleasure of the agent, T. A. Buck, leaning upon his stick, looked about him appreciatively. "Makes the Knickerbocker lobby look like the waiting-room in an orphan asylum."

"Don't let 'em fool you," answered Emma McChesney, sotto voce, just before the agent popped out of his office. "It's all included in the rent. Dinky enough up-stairs. If ever I have guests that I want to impress I'll entertain 'em in the hall."

There approached them the agent, smiling, urbane, pleasing as to manner—but not too pleasing; urbanity mixed, so to speak, with the leaven of caution.

"Ah, yes! Mrs.—er—McChesney, wasn't it? I can't tell you how many parties have been teasing me for that apartment since you looked at it. I've had to—well—make myself positively unpleasant in order to hold it for you. You said you wished your son to—"

The glittering little jewel-box of an elevator was taking them higher and higher. The agent stared hard at T. A. Buck.

Mrs. McChesney followed his gaze. "My business associate, Mr. T. A. Buck," she said grimly.

The agent discarded caution; he was all urbanity. Their floor attained, he unlocked the apartment door and threw it open with a gesture which was a miraculous mixture of royalty and generosity.

"He knows you!" hissed Emma McChesney, entering with T. A. "Another ten on the rent. "The agent pulled up a shade, switched on a light, straightened an electric globe. T. A. Buck looked about at the bare white walls, at the bare polished floor, at the severe fireplace.

"I knew it couldn't last," he said.

"If it did," replied Emma McChesney good-naturedly, "I couldn't afford to live here," and disappeared into the kitchen followed by the agent, who babbled ever and anon of views, of Hudsons, of express-trains, of parks, as is the way of agents from Fiftieth Street to One Hundred and 'Umpty-ninth.

T. A. Buck, feet spread wide, hands behind him, was left standing in the center of the empty living-room. He was leaning on his stick and gazing fixedly upward at the ornate chandelier. It was a handsome fixture, and boasted some of the most advanced ideas in modern lighting equipment. Yet it scarcely seemed to warrant the passionate scrutiny which T. A. Buck was bestowing upon it. So rapt was his gaze that when the telephone-bell shrilled unexpectedly in the hallway he started so that his stick slipped on the polished floor, and as Emma McChesney and the still voluble agent emerged from the kitchen the dignified head of the firm of T. A. Buck and Company presented an animated picture, one leg in the air, arms waving wildly, expression at once amazed and hurt.

Emma McChesney surveyed him wide-eyed. The agent, unruffled, continued to talk on his way to the telephone.

"It only looks small to you," he was saying. "Fact is, most people think it's too large. They object to a big kitchen. Too much work." He gave his attention to the telephone.

Emma McChesney looked troubled. She stood in the doorway, head on one side, as one who conjures up a mental picture.

"Come here," she commanded suddenly, addressing the startled T. A. "You nagged until I had to take you along. Here's a chance to justify your coming. I want your opinion on the kitchen."

"Kitchens," announced T. A. Buck of the English clothes and the gardenia, "are my specialty," and entered the domain of the gas-range and the sink.

Emma McChesney swept the infinitesimal room with a large gesture.

"Considering it as a kitchen, not as a locker, does it strike you as being adequate?"

T. A. Buck, standing in the center of the room, touched all four walls with his stick.

"I've heard," he ventured, "that they're—ah—using 'em small this year."

Emma McChesney's eyes took on a certain wistful expression. "Maybe. But whenever I've dreamed of a home, which was whenever I got lonesome on the road, which was every evening for ten years, I'd start to plan a kitchen. A kitchen where you could put up preserves, and a keg of dill pickles, and get a full-sized dinner without getting things more than just comfortably cluttered."

T. A. Buck reflected. He flapped his arms as one who feels pressed for room. "With two people occupying the room, as at present, the presence of one dill pickle would sort of crowd things, not to speak of a keg of 'em, and the full-sized dinner, and the—er—preserves. Still—"

"As for a turkey," wailed Emma McChesney, "one would have to go out on the fire-escape to baste it."

The swinging door opened to admit the agent. "Would you excuse me? A party down-stairs—lease—be back in no time. Just look about—any questions—glad to answer later—"

"Quite all right," Mrs. McChesney assured him. Her expression was one of relief as the hall door closed behind him. "Good! There's a spot in the mirror over the mantel. I've been dying to find out if it was a flaw in the glass or only a smudge."

She made for the living-room. T. A. Buck followed thoughtfully. Thoughtfully and interestedly he watched her as she stood on tiptoe, breathed stormily upon the mirror's surface, and rubbed the moist place with her handkerchief. She stood back a pace, eyes narrowed critically.

"It's gone, isn't it?" she asked.

T. A. Buck advanced to where she stood and cocked his head too, judicially, and in the opposite direction to which Emma McChesney's head was cocked. So that the two heads were very close together.

"It's a poor piece of glass," he announced at last.

A simple enough remark. Perhaps it was made with an object in view, but certainly it was not meant to bring forth the storm of protest that came from Emma McChesney's lips. She turned on him, lips quivering, eyes wrathful.

"You shouldn't have come!" she cried. "You're as much out of place in a six-room flat as a truffle would be in a boiled New England dinner. Do you think I don't see its shortcomings? Every normal woman, no matter what sort of bungalow, palace, ranch-house, cave, cottage, or tenement she may be living in, has in her mind's eye a picture of the sort of apartment she'd live in if she could afford it. I've had mine mapped out from the wall-paper in the front hall to the laundry-tubs in the basement, and it doesn't even bear a family resemblance to this."

"I'm sorry," stammered T. A. Buck. "You asked my opinion and I—"

"Opinion! If every one had so little tact as to give their true opinion when it was asked this would be a miserable world. I asked you because I wanted you to lie. I expected it of you. I needed bolstering up. I realize that the rent I'm paying and the flat I'm getting form a geometrical problem where X equals the unknown quantity and only the agent knows the answer. But it's going to be a home for Jock and me. It's going to be a place where he can bring his friends; where he can have his books, and his 'baccy, and his college junk. It will be the first real home that youngster has known in all his miserable boarding-house, hotel, boys' school, and college existence. Sometimes when I think of what he's missed, of the loneliness and the neglect when I was on the road, of the barrenness of his boyhood, I—"

T. A. Buck started forward as one who had made up his mind about something long considered. Then he gulped, retreated, paced excitedly to the door and back again. On the return trip he found smiling and repentant Emma McChesney regarding him.

"Now aren't you sorry you insisted on coming along? Letting yourself in for a ragging like that? I think I'm a wee bit taut in the nerves at the prospect of seeing Jock—and planning things with him—I—"

T. A. Buck paused in his pacing. "Don't!" he said. "I had it coming to me. I did it deliberately. I wanted to know how you really felt about it."

Emma McChesney stared at him curiously. "Well, now you know. But I haven't told you half. In all those years while I was selling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats on the road, and eating hotel food that tasted the same, whether it was roast beef or ice-cream, I was planning this little place. I've even made up my mind to the scandalous price I'm willing to pay a maid who'll cook real dinners for us and serve them as I've always vowed Jock's dinners should be served when I could afford something more than a shifting hotel home."

T. A. Buck was regarding the head of his if walking-stick with a gaze as intent as that which he previously had bestowed upon the chandelier. For that matter it was a handsome enough stick—a choice thing in malacca. But it was scarcely more deserving than the chandelier had been.

Mrs. McChesney had wandered into the dining-room. She peered out of windows. She poked into butler's pantry. She inspected wall-lights. And still T. A. Buck stared at his stick.

"It's really robbery," came Emma McChesney's voice from the next room. "Only a New York agent could have the nerve to do it. I've a friend who lives in Chicago—Mary Cutting. You've heard me speak of her. Has a flat on the north side there, just next door to the lake. The rent is ridiculous; and—would you believe it?—the flat is equipped with bookcases, and gorgeous mantel shelves, and buffet, and bathroom fixtures, and china-closets, and hall-tree—"

Her voice trailed into nothingness as she disappeared into the kitchen. When she emerged again she was still enumerating the charms of the absurdly low-priced Chicago flat, thus:

"—and full-length mirrors, and wonderful folding table-shelf gimcracks in the kitchen, and—"

T. A. Buck did not look up. But, "Oh, Chicago!" he might have been heard to murmur, as only a New-Yorker can breathe those two words.

"Don't 'Oh, Chicago!' like that," mimicked Emma McChesney. "I've lain awake nights dreaming of a home I once saw there, with the lake in the back yard, and a couple of miles of veranda, and a darling vegetable- garden, and the whole place simply honeycombed with bathrooms, and sleeping-porches, and sun-parlors, and linen-closets, and—gracious, I wonder what's keeping Jock!"

T. A. Buck wrenched his eyes from his stick. All previous remarks descriptive of his eyes under excitement paled at the glow which lighted them now. They glowed straight into Emma McChesney's eyes and held them, startled.

"Emma," said T. A. Buck quite calmly, "will you marry me? I want to give you all those things, beginning with the lake in the back yard and ending with the linen-closets and the sun-parlor."

And Emma McChesney, standing there in the middle of the dining-room floor, stared long at T. A. Buck, standing there in the center of the living-room floor. And if any human face, in the space of seventeen seconds, could be capable of expressing relief, and regret, and alarm, and dismay, and tenderness, and wonder, and a great womanly sympathy, Emma McChesney's countenance might be said to have expressed all those emotions—and more. The last two were uppermost as she slowly came toward him.

"T. A.," she said, and her voice had in it a marvelous quality, "I'm thirty-nine years old. You know I was married when I was eighteen and got my divorce after eight years. Those eight years would have left any woman who had endured them with one of two determinations: to take up life again and bring it out into the sunshine until it was sound, and sweet, and clean, and whole once more, or to hide the hurt and brood over it, and cover it with bitterness, and hate until it destroyed by its very foulness. I had Jock, and I chose the sun, thank God! I said then that marriage was a thing tried and abandoned forever, for me. And now—"

There was something almost fine in the lines of T. A. Buck's too feminine mouth and chin; but not fine enough.

"Now, Emma," he repeated, "will you marry me?"

Emma McChesney's eyes were a wonderful thing to see, so full of pain were they, so wide with unshed tears.

"As long as—he—lived," she went on, "the thought of marriage was repulsive to me. Then, that day seven months ago out in Iowa, when I picked up that paper and saw it staring out at me in print that seemed to waver and dance"—she covered her eyes with her hand for a moment— "'McChesney—Stuart McChesney, March 7, aged forty-seven years. Funeral to-day from Howland Brothers' chapel. Aberdeen and Edinburgh papers please copy!'"



T. A. Buck took the hand that covered her eyes and brought it gently down.

"Emma," he said, "will you marry me?"

"T. A., I don't love you. Wait! Don't say it! I'm thirty-nine, but I'm brave and foolish enough to say that all these years of work, and disappointment, and struggle, and bitter experience haven't convinced me that love does not exist. People have said about me, seeing me in business, that I'm not a marrying woman. There is no such thing as that. Every woman is a marrying woman, and sometimes the light- heartedest, and the scoffingest, and the most self-sufficient of us are, beneath it all, the marryingest. Perhaps I'm making a mistake. Perhaps ten years from now I'll be ready to call myself a fool for having let slip what the wise ones would call a 'chance.' But I don't think so, T. A."

"You know me too well," argued T. A. Buck rather miserably. "But at least you know the worst of me as well as the best. You'd be taking no risks."

Emma McChesney walked to the window. There was a little silence. Then she finished it with one clean stroke. "We've been good business chums, you and I. I hope we always shall be. I can imagine nothing more beautiful on this earth for a woman than being married to a man she cares for and who cares for her. But, T. A., you're not the man."

And then there were quick steps in the corridor, a hand at the door- knob, a slim, tall figure in the doorway. Emma McChesney seemed to waft across the rooms and into the embrace of the slim, tall figure.

"Welcome—home!" she cried. "Sketch in the furniture to suit yourself."

"This is going to be great—great!" announced Jock. "What do you know about the Oriental potentate down-stairs! I guess Otis Skinner has nothing on him when it comes—Why, hello, Mr. Buck!" He was peering into the next room. "Why don't you folks light up? I thought you were another agent person. Met that one down in the hail. Said he'd be right up. What's the matter with him anyway? He smiles like a waxworks. When the elevator took me up he was still smiling from the foyer, and I could see his grin after the rest of him was lost to sight. Regular Cheshire. What's this? Droring-room?"



He rattled on like a pleased boy. He strode over to shake hands with Buck. Emma McChesney, cheeks glowing, eyed him adoringly. Then she gave a little suppressed cry.

"Jock, what's happened?"

Jock whirled around like a cat. "Where? When? What?"

Emma McChesney pointed at him with one shaking finger. "You! You're thin! You're—you're emaciated. Your shoulders, where are they? Your— your legs—"

Jock looked down at himself. His glance was pride. "Clothes," he said.

"Clothes?" faltered his mother.

"You're losing your punch, Mother? You used to be up on men's rigging. All the boys look like their own shadows these days. English cut. No padding. No heels. Incurve at the waist. Watch me walk." He flapped across the room, chest concave, shoulders rounded, arms hanging limp, feet wide apart, chin thrust forward.

"Do you mean to tell me that's your present form of locomotion?" demanded his mother.

"I hope so. Been practising it for weeks. They call it the juvenile jump, and all our best leading men have it. I trailed Douglas Fairbanks for days before I really got it."

And the tension between T. A. Buck and Emma McChesney snapped with a jerk, and they both laughed, and laughed again, at Jock's air of offended dignity. They laughed until the rancor in the heart of the man and the hurt and pity in the heart of the woman melted into a bond of lasting understanding.

"Go on—laugh!" said Jock. "Say, Mother, is there a shower in the bathroom, h'm?" And was off to investigate.

The laughter trailed away into nothingness. "Jock," called his mother, "do you want your bedroom done in plain or stripes?"

"Plain," came from the regions beyond. "Got a lot of pennants and everything."

T. A. Buck picked up his stick from the corner in which it stood.

"I'll run along," he said. "You two will want to talk things over together." He raised his voice to reach the boy in the other room. "I'm off, Jock."

Jock's protest sounded down the hall. "Don't leave me alone with her. She'll blarney me into consenting to blue-and-pink rosebud paper in my bedroom."

T. A. Buck had the courage to smile even at that. Emma McChesney was watching him, her clear eyes troubled, anxious.

At the door Buck turned, came back a step or two. "I—I think, if you don't mind, I'll play hooky this time and run over to Atlantic City for a couple of days. You'll find things slowing up, now that the holidays are so near."

"Fine idea—fine!" agreed Emma McChesney; but her eyes still wore the troubled look.

"Good-by," said T. A. Buck abruptly.

"Good—" and then she stopped. "I've a brand-new idea. Give you something to worry about on your vacation."

"I'm supplied," answered T. A. Buck grimly.

"Nonsense! A real worry. A business worry. A surprise."

Jock had joined them, and was towering over his mother, her hand in his.

T. A. Buck regarded them moodily. "After your pajama and knickerbocker stunt I'm braced for anything."

"Nothing theatrical this time," she assured him. "Don't expect a show such as you got when I touched off the last fuse."

An eager, expectant look was replacing the gloom that bad clouded his face. "Spring it."

Emma McChesney waited a moment; then, "I think the time has come to put in another line—a staple. It's—flannel nightgowns."

"Flannel nightgowns!" Disgust shivered through Buck's voice. "Flannel nightgowns! They quit wearing those when Broadway was a cow-path."

"Did, eh?" retorted Emma McChesney. "That's the New-Yorker speaking. Just because the French near-actresses at the Winter Garden wear silk lace and sea-foam nighties in their imported boudoir skits, and just because they display only those frilly, beribboned handmade affairs in the Fifth Avenue shop-windows, don't you ever think that they're a national vice. Let me tell you," she went on as T. A. Buck's demeanor grew more bristlingly antagonistic, "there are thousands and thousands of women up in Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Oregon, and Alaska, and Nebraska, and Dakota who are thankful to retire every night protected by one long, thick, serviceable flannel nightie, and one practical hot-water bag. Up in those countries retiring isn't a social rite: it's a feat of hardihood. I'm keen for a line of plain, full, roomy old-fashioned flannel nightgowns of the improved T. A. Buck Featherloom products variety. They'll be wearing 'em long after knickerbockers have been cut up for patchwork."

The moody look was quite absent from T. A. Buck's face now, and the troubled look from Emma McChesney's eyes.

"Well," Buck said grudgingly, "if you were to advise making up a line of the latest models in deep-sea divers' uniforms, I suppose I'd give in. But flannel nightgowns! In the twentieth century—flannel night—"

"Think it over," laughed Emma McChesney as he opened the door. "We'll have it out, tooth and nail, when you get back."

The door closed upon him. Emma McChesney and her son were left alone in their new home to be.

"Turn out the light, son," said Emma McChesney, "and come to the window. There's a view! Worth the money, alone."

Jock switched off the light. "D' you know, Blonde, I shouldn't wonder if old T. A.'s sweetish on you," he said as he came over to the window.

"Old!"

"He's forty or over, isn't he?"

"Son, do you realize your charming mother's thirty-nine?"

"Oh, you! That's different. You look a kid. You're young in all the spots where other women of thirty-nine look old. Around the eyes, and under the chin, and your hands, and the corners of your mouth."

In the twilight Emma McChesney turned to stare at her son. "Just where did you learn all that, young 'un? At college?"

And, "Some view, isn't it, Mother?" parried Jock. The two stood there, side by side, looking out across the great city that glittered and swam in the soft haze of the late November afternoon. There are lovelier sights than New York seen at night, from a window eyrie with a mauve haze softening all, as a beautiful but experienced woman is softened by an artfully draped scarf of chiffon. There are cities of roses, cities of mountains, cities of palm-trees and sparkling lakes; but no sight, be it of mountains, or roses, or lakes, or waving palm- trees, is more likely to cause that vague something which catches you in the throat.

It caught those two home-hungry people. And it opened the lips of one of them almost against his will.

"Mother," said Jock haltingly, painfully, "I came mighty near coming home—for good—this time."

His mother turned and searched his face in the dim light.

"What was it, Jock?" she asked, quite without fuss.

The slim young figure in the jumping juvenile clothes stirred and tried to speak, tried again, formed the two words: "A—girl."

Emma McChesney waited a second, until the icy, cruel, relentless hand that clutched her very heart should have relaxed ever so little. Then, "Tell me, sonny boy," she said.

"Why, Mother—that girl—" There was an agony of bitterness and of disillusioned youth in his voice.

Emma McChesney came very close, so that her head, in the pert little close-fitting hat, rested on the boy's shoulder. She linked her arm through his, snug and warm.

"That girl—" she echoed encouragingly.

And, "That girl," went on Jock, taking up the thread of his grief, "why, Mother, that—girl—"

THE END