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“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.”