buy. They're afraid of it. I'll take it off
your hands and push it right, see? I offer you forty thousand for the
rights to make that skirt and advertise it as the 'Fromkin Full-flounce
Skirt. It Flares!'"

Emma smiled.

"How much?" she asked quizzically.

Abel I. Fromkin gulped.

"Fifty thousand," he said.

"Fifty thousand," repeated Emma quietly, and looked at Buck. "Thanks,
Mr. Fromkin! I know, now, that if it's worth fifty thousand to you
to-day as the 'Fromkin Full-flounce Skirt. It Flares!' then it's worth
one hundred and fifty thousand to us as the 'T. A. Buck
Balloon-Petticoat. It Billows!'"

And it was.

VI

SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKIN

Women who know the joys and sorrows of a pay envelope do not speak of
girls who work as Working Girls. Neither do they use the term Laboring
Class, as one would speak of a distinct and separate race, like the
Ethiopian.

Emma McChesney Buck was no exception to this rule. Her fifteen years
of man-size work for a man-size salary in the employ of the T. A. Buck
Featherloom Petticoat Company, New York, precluded that. In those
days, she had been Mrs. Emma McChesney, known from coast to coast as
the most successful traveling saleswoman in the business. It was due
to her that no feminine clothes-closet was complete without a
Featherloom dangling from one hook. During those fifteen years she had
educated her son, Jock McChesney, and made a man of him; she had
worked, fought, saved, triumphed, smiled under hardship; and she had
acquired a broad and deep knowledge of those fascinating and
diversified subjects which we lump carelessly under the heading of
Human Nature. She was Mrs. T. A. Buck now, wife of the head of the
firm, and partner in the most successful skirt manufactory in the
country. But the hard-working, clear-thinking, sane-acting habits of
those fifteen years still clung.

Perhaps this explained why every machine-girl in the big, bright shop
back of the offices raised adoring eyes when Emma entered the workroom.
Italian, German, Hungarian, Russian--they lifted their faces toward
this source of love and sympathetic understanding as naturally as a
plant turns its leaves toward the sun. They glowed under her praise;
they confided to her their troubles; they came to her with their
joys--and they copied her clothes.

This last caused her some uneasiness. When Mrs. T. A. Buck wore blue
serge, an epidemic of blue serge broke out in the workroom. D