ntal eyes, and their conscious grace. Often, as she looked,
an unaccountable mist of tears would blur her vision.

So that sunny little room whose door was marked "MRS. BUCK" had come to
be more than a mere private office for the transaction of business. It
was a clearing-house for trouble; it was a shrine, a confessional, and
a court of justice. When Carmela Colarossi, her face swollen with
weeping, told a story of parental harshness grown unbearable, Emma
would put aside business to listen, and six o'clock would find her
seated in the dark and smelly Colarossi kitchen, trying, with all her
tact and patience and sympathy, to make home life possible again for
the flashing-eyed Carmela. When the deft, brown fingers of Otti Markis
became clumsy at her machine, and her wage slumped unaccountably from
sixteen to six dollars a week, it was in Emma's quiet little office
that it became clear why Otti's eyes were shadowed and why Otti's mouth
drooped so pathetically. Emma prescribed a love philter made up of
common sense, understanding, and world-wisdom. Otti took it, only half
comprehending, but sure of its power. In a week, Otti's eyes were
shadowless, her lips smiling, her pay-envelope bulging. But it was in
Sophy Kumpf that the T. A. Buck Company best exemplified its policy.
Sophy Kumpf had come to Buck's thirty years before, slim, pink-cheeked,
brown-haired. She was a grandmother now, at forty-six, broad-bosomed,
broad-hipped, but still pink of cheek and brown of hair. In those
thirty years she had spent just three away from Buck's. She had brought
her children into the world; she had fed them and clothed them and sent
them to school, had Sophy, and seen them married, and helped them to
bring their children into the world in turn. In her round, red,
wholesome face shone a great wisdom, much love, and that infinite
understanding which is born only of bitter experience. She had come to
Buck's when old T. A. was just beginning to make Featherlooms a
national institution. She had seen his struggles, his prosperity; she
had grieved at his death; she had watched young T. A. take the reins in
his unaccustomed hands, and she had gloried in Emma McChesney's rise
from office to salesroom, from salesroom to road, from road to private
office and recognized authority. Sophy had left her early work far
behind. She had her own desk now in the busy workshop, and it was she
who allotted the piece-work, marked it in her much-thu