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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–“