w designs for spring, though it was
scarcely mid-winter. The head designer came forward timidly with a
skirt that measured a yard around the bottom. Emma looked at it, tried
to keep her lower lip prisoner between her teeth, failed, and began to
laugh helplessly, almost hysterically.

Amazement in the faces of Buck and Koritz, the designer, became
consternation, then, in the designer, resentment.

Koritz, dark, undersized, with the eyes of an Oriental and the lean,
sensitive fingers of one who creates, shivered a little, like a plant
that is swept by an icy blast. Buck came over and laid one hand on his
wife's shaking shoulder.

"Emma, you're overtired! This--this thing you've been slaving over has
been too much for you."

With one hand, Emma reached up and patted the fingers that rested
protectingly on her shoulder. With the other, she wiped her eyes,
then, all contrition, grasped the slender brown hand of the offended
Koritz.

"Bennie, please forgive me! I--I didn't mean to laugh. I wasn't
laughing at your new skirt."

"You think it's too wide, maybe, huh?" Bennie Koritz said, and held it
up doubtfully.

"Too wide!" For a moment Emma seemed threatened with another attack of
that inexplicable laughter. She choked it back resolutely.

"No, Bennie; not too wide. I'll tell you to-morrow why I laughed.
Then, perhaps, you'll laugh with me."

Bennie, draping his despised skirt-model over one arm, had the courage
to smile even now, though grimly.

"I laugh--sure," he said, showing his white teeth now. "But the laugh
will be, I bet you, on me--like it was when you designed that
knickerbocker before the trade knew such a thing could be."

Impulsively Emma grasped his hand and shook it, as though she found a
certain needed encouragement in the loyalty of this sallow little
Russian.

"Bennie, you're a true artist--because you're big enough to praise the
work of a fellow craftsman when you recognize its value." And Koritz,
the dull red showing under the olive of his cheeks, went back to his
cutting-table happy.

Buck bent forward, eagerly.

"You're going to tell me now, Emma? It's finished?"

"To-night--at home. I want to be the first to try it on. I'll play
model. A private exhibition, just for you. It's not only finished; it
is patented."

"Patented! But why? What is it, anyway? A new fastener? I thought
it was a skirt."

"Wait until you see it. You'll think I should have had it copyr