A. in? I'll look in on him a minute. We'll all lunch together, and
then----"

"Can't do it, son. The show opens at one. Gertrude, my model, comes
on at three. She's going to have the stage to herself for ten minutes,
during which she'll make four changes of costume to demonstrate the
usefulness of the skirt for every sort of gown from chiffon to velvet.
Come back here at one, if you like. If I'm not here, come over to the
show. But--lunch! I'd choke."

At twelve-thirty, there scampered into Emma's office a very
white-faced, round-eyed little stock-girl. Emma, deep in a last-minute
discussion with Buck, had a premonition of trouble before the girl
gasped out her message.

"Oh, Mrs. Buck, Gertie's awful sick!"

"Sick!" echoed Emma and Buck, in duet. Then Emma:

"But she can't be! It's impossible! She was all right a half hour
ago." She was hurrying down the hall as she spoke. "Where is she?"

"They've got her on one of the tables in the workroom. She's moaning
awful."

Gertie's appendix, with that innate sense of the dramatic so often
found in temperamental appendices, had indeed chosen this moment to
call attention to itself. Gertie, the demurely pretty and quietly
charming, was rolled in a very tight ball on the workroom
cutting-table. At one o'clock, she was on her way home in a cab, under
the care of a doctor, Miss Kelly, the bookkeeper, and Jock, who, coming
in gaily at one, had been pressed into service, bewildered but willing.

Three rather tragic figures stared at one another in the junior
partner's office. They were Emma, Buck, and Grace Galt, Jock's
wife-to-be. Grace Galt, slim, lovely, girlish, was known, at
twenty-four, as one of the most expert copy writers in the advertising
world. In her clear-headed, capable manner, she tried to suggest a way
out of the difficulty now.

"But surely the world's full of girls," she said. "It's late, I know;
but any theatrical agency will send a girl over."

"That's just what I tried to avoid," Emma replied. "I wanted to show
this skirt on a sweet, pretty, refined sort of girl who looks and acts
like a lady. One of those blond show girls would kill it."

Gloom settled down again over the three. Emma broke the silence with a
rueful little laugh.

"I think," she said, "that perhaps you're right, T. A., and this is the
Lord's way of showing me that the world is not quite ready for this
skirt."

"You're not beaten yet, Emma," Buck assured he