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Miss Kate Nevins’s reply to this plaint was: “Oh, when you get your tie on–“

“Perhaps they’ll let me wear a turn-down collar.”

“Absolutely against regulations. The rules strictly forbid anything but the high, close-fitting collar.”

The fair war worker would sigh, mutter something about supposing they’d shoot you at sunrise for wearing a becoming shirt, and order six, grumbling.

Kate Nevins had known Mrs. T.A. Buck in that lady’s Emma McChesney days. At the end of the first day’s trial of the new Featherloom shirt she had telephoned the Featherloom factory and had asked for Emma McChesney. People who had known her by that name never seemed able to get the trick of calling her by any other.

With every fitting-room in the Fyfe & Gordon establishment demanding her attention, Miss Nevins’s conversation was necessarily brief. “Emma McChesney?… Kate Nevins…. Who’s responsible for the collar on those Featherloom shirts?… I was sure of it…. No regular designer could cut a collar like that. Takes a genius…. H’m?… Well, I mean it. I’m going to write to Washington and have ’em vote you a distinguished service medal. This is the first day since last I-don’t-know-when that hasn’t found me in the last stages of nervous exhaustion at six o’clock…. All these women warriors are willing to bleed and die for their country, but they want to do it in a collar that fits, and I don’t blame ’em. After I saw the pictures of that Russian Battalion of Death, I understood why…. Yes, I know I oughtn’t to say that, but….”

By autumn Emma was wearing one of those Featherloom service shirts herself. It was inevitable that a woman of her executive ability, initiative, and detail sense should be pressed into active service. November saw Fifth Avenue a-glitter with uniforms, and one third of them seemed to be petticoated. The Featherloom factory saw little of Emma now. She bore the title of Commandant with feminine captains, lieutenants, and girl workers under her; and her blue uniform, as she herself put it, was so a-jingle with straps, buckles, belts, bars, and bolts that when she first put it on she felt like a jail.

She left the house at eight in the morning now. Dinner time rarely found her back in Sixty-third Street. Buck was devoting four evenings a week to the draft board. At the time of the second Liberty Loan drive in the autumn he had deserted Featherlooms for bonds. His success was due to the commodity he had for sale, the type of person to whom he sold it, and his own selling methods and personality. There was something about this slim, leisurely man, with the handsome eyes and the quiet voice, that convinced and impressed you.

“It’s your complete lack of eagerness in the transaction, too,” Emma remarked after watching him land a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bond pledge, the buyer a business rival of the Featherloom Petticoat Company. “You make it seem a privilege, not a favour. A man with your method could sell sandbags in the Sahara.”

Sometimes the two dined downtown together. Sometimes they scarcely saw each other for days on end. One afternoon at 5.30, Emma, on duty bound, espied him walking home up Fifth Avenue, on the opposite side of the street. She felt a little pang as she watched the easy, graceful figure swinging its way up the brilliant, flag-decked avenue. She had given him so little time and thought; she had bestowed upon the house such scant attention in the last few weeks. She turned abruptly and crossed the street, dodging the late afternoon traffic with a sort of expert recklessness. She almost ran after the tall figure that was now a block ahead of her, and walking fast. She caught up with him, matched his stride, and touched his arm lightly.

“I beg your pardon, but aren’t you Mr. T.A. Buck?”

“Yes.”

“How do you do! I’m Mrs. Buck.”

Then they had giggled together, deliciously, and he had put a firm hand on the smartly tailored blue serge sleeve.