f business
aberration. A blight seemed to have fallen upon her bright little
office, usually humming with activity. The machinery of her day,
ordinarily as noiseless and well ordered as a thing on ball bearings,
now rasped, creaked, jerked, stood still, jolted on again. A bustling
clerk or stenographer, entering with paper or memorandum, would find
her bent over her desk, pencil in hand, absorbed in a rough drawing
that seemed to bear no relation to the skirt of the day. The margin of
her morning paper was filled with queer little scrawls by the time she
reached the office. She drew weird lines with her fork on the
table-cloth at lunch. These hieroglyphics she covered with a quick
hand, like a bashful schoolgirl, when any one peeped.

"Tell a fellow what it's going to be, can't you?" pleaded Buck.

"I got one glimpse yesterday, when you didn't know I was looking over
your shoulder. It seemed a pass between an overgrown Zeppelin and an
apple dumpling. So I know it can't be a skirt. Come on, Emma; tell
your old man!"

"Not yet," Emma would reply dreamily.

Buck would strike an attitude intended to intimidate.

"If you have no sense of what is due me as your husband, then I demand,
as senior partner of this firm, to know what it is that is taking your
time, which rightfully belongs to this business."

"Go away, T. A., and stop pestering me! What do you think I'm
designing--a doily?"

Buck, turning to go to his own office, threw a last retort over his
shoulder--a rather sobering one, this time.

"Whatever it is, it had better be good--with business what it is and
skirts what they are."

Emma lifted her head to reply to that.

"It isn't what they are that interests me. It's what they're going to
be."

Buck paused in the doorway.

"Going to be! Anybody can see that. Underneath that full, fool,
flaring over-drape, the real skirt is as tight as ever. I don't think
the spring models will show an inch of real difference. I tell you,
Emma, it's serious."

Emma, apparently absorbed in her work, did not reply to this. But a
vague something about the back of her head told T. A. Buck that she was
laughing at him. The knowledge only gave him new confidence in this
resourceful, many-sided, lovable, level-headed partner-wife of his.

Two weeks went by--four--six--eight. Emma began to look a little thin.
Her bright color was there only when she was overtired or excited. The
workrooms began to talk of ne