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 Munic.i.p.al 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 c.o.c.ked 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 st.i.tched 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 ch.o.r.es 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 hara.s.sed, 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 b.u.t.tonhole.
""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 circ.u.mstances 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. a.s.sets one hundred thousand."
"Failed! Good G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.p 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."