.
And they're waiting to hear from headquarters."

T. A. Buck crossed one leg over the other and sat up with a little sigh.

"Well, that settles it, doesn't it?" he said.

"It does not," replied Emma McChesney Buck crisply. "If they want to
hear from headquarters, they won't have long to wait."

"Now, Emma, don't try to push this thing if it----"

"T. A., please don't look so forgiving. I'd much rather have you
reproach me."

"It's you I'm thinking of, not the skirt."

"But I want you to think of the skirt, too. We've gone into this
thing, and it has cost us thousands. Don't think I'm going to sit
quietly by and watch those thousands trickle out of our hands. We've
played our first card. It didn't take a trick. Here's another."

Buck and Spalding were leaning forward, interested, attentive. There
was that in Emma's vivid, glowing face which did not mean defeat.

"March fifteenth, at Madison Square Garden, there is to be held the
first annual exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of American
Styles for American Women. For one hundred years we've taken our
fashions as Paris dictated, regardless of whether they outraged our
sense of humor or decency or of fitness. This year the American
designer is going to have a chance. Am I an American designer, T. A.,
Billy?"

"Yes!" in chorus.

"Then I shall exhibit that skirt on a live model at the First Annual
American Fashion Show next month. Every skirt-buyer in the country
will be there. If it takes hold there, it's made--and so are we."

March came, and with it an army of men and women buyers, dependent, for
the first time in their business careers, on the ingenuity of the
American brain. The keen-eyed legions that had advanced on Europe
early, armed with letters of credit--the vast horde that returned each
spring and autumn laden with their spoils--hats, gowns, laces, linens,
silks, embroideries--were obliged to content themselves with what was
to be found in their own camp.

Clever manager that she was, Emma took as much pains with her model as
with the skirt itself. She chose a girl whose demure prettiness and
quiet charm would enhance the possibilities of the skirt's
practicability in the eye of the shrewd buyer. Gertrude, the model,
developed a real interest in the success of the petticoat. Emma knew
enough about the psychology of crowds to realize how this increased her
chances for success.

The much heralded fashion show was to open