thing for me. If I go into it, I'll go in heart, soul, brain, and
pocket-book. I do know the skirt business from thread to tape and back
again. I've managed to save a few thousand dollars. Only a woman could
understand how I've done it. I've scrimped on little things. I've denied
myself necessities. I've worn silk blouses instead of linen ones to save
laundry-bills and taken a street-car or 'bus to save a quarter or fifty
cents. I've always tried to look well dressed and immaculate--”
“You!” exclaimed Ed Meyers. “Why, say, you're what I call a swell
dresser. Nothing flashy, understand, or loud, but the quiet, good stuff
that spells ready money.”
“M-m-m--yes. But it wasn't always so ready. Anyway, I always managed
somehow. The boy's at college. Sometimes I wonder--well, that's another
story. I've saved, and contrived, and planned ahead for a rainy day.
There have been two or three times when I thought it had come. Sprinkled
pretty heavily, once or twice. But I've just turned up my coat-collar,
tucked my hat under my skirt, and scooted for a tree. And each time
it has turned out to be just a summer shower, with the sun coming out
bright and warm.”
Her frank, clear, honest, blue eyes were plumbing the depths of the
black ones. “Those few thousand dollars that you hold so lightly will
mean everything to me. They've been my cyclone-cellar. If--”
Through the writing-room sounded a high-pitched, monotonous voice with a
note of inquiry in it.
“Mrs. McChesney! Mr. Fraser! Mr. Ludwig! Please! Mrs. McChesney! Mr.
Fraser! Mr. Lud--”
“Here, boy!” Mrs. McChesney took the little yellow envelope from the
salver that the boy held out to her. Her quick glance rested on the
written words. She rose, her face colorless.
“Not bad news?” The two men spoke simultaneously.
“I don't know,” said Emma McChesney. “What would you say?”
She handed the slip of paper to Fat Ed Meyers. He read it in silence.
Then once more, aloud:
“'Take first train back to New York. Spalding will finish your trip.'”
“Why--say--” began Meyers.
“Well?”
“Why--say--this--this looks as if you were fired!”
“Does, doesn't it?” She smiled.
“Then our little agreement goes?” The two men were on their feet, eager,
alert. “That means you'll take Fromkin's offer?”
“It means that our little agreement is off. I'm sorry to disappoint you.
I want to thank you both for your trouble. I must have been crazy to
listen to you for a minute. I wouldn't have if I'd been myself.”
“But that telegram--”
“It's signed, 'T. A. Buck.' I'll take a chance.”
The two men stared after her, disappointment and bewilderment chasing
across each face.
“Well, I thought I knew women, but--” began Ed Meyers fluently.
Passing the desk, Mrs. McChesney heard her name. She glanced toward the
clerk. He was just hanging up the telephone-receiver.
“Baggage-room says the depot just notified 'em your trunks were traced
to Columbia City. They're on their way here now.”
“Columbia City!” repeated Emma McChesney. “Do you know, I believe I've
learned to hate the name of the discoverer of this fair land.”
Up in her room she opened the crumpled telegram again, and regarded it
thoughtfully before she began to pack her bag.
The thoughtful look was still there when she entered the big bright
office of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. And with it was
another expression that resembled contrition.
“Mr. Buck's waiting for you,” a stenographer told her.
Mrs. McChesney opened the door of the office marked “Private.”
Two men rose. One she recognized as the firm's lawyer. The other, who
came swiftly toward her, was T. A. Buck--no longer junior. There was
a new look about him--a look of responsibility, of efficiency, of
clear-headed knowledge.
The two clasped hands--a firm, sincere, understanding grip.
Buck spoke first. “It's good to see you. We were talking of you as
you came in. You know Mr. Beggs, of course. He has some things to tell
you--and so have I. His will be business things, mine will be personal.
I got there before father passed away--thank God! But he couldn't speak.
He'd anticipated that with his clear-headedness, and he'd written what
he wanted to say. A great deal of it was about you. I want you to read
that letter later.”
“I shall consider it a privilege,” said Emma McChesney.
Mr. Beggs waved her toward a chair. She took it in silence. She heard
him in silence, his sonorous voice beating upon her brain.
“There are a great many papers and much business detail, but that
will be attended to later,” began Beggs ponderously. “You are to be
congratulated on the position of esteem and trust which you held in
the mind of your late employer. By the terms of his will--I'll put it
briefly, for the moment--you are offered the secretaryship of the firm
of T. A. Buck, Incorporated. Also you are bequeathed thirty shares in
the firm. Of course, the company will have to be reorganized. The late
Mr. Buck had great trust in your capabilities.”
Emma McChesney rose to her feet, her breath coming quickly. She turned
to T. A. Buck. “I want you to know--I want you to know--that just before
your telegram came I was half tempted to leave the firm. To--”
“Can't blame you,” smiled T. A. Buck. “You've had a rotten six months of
it, beginning with that illness and ending with those infernal trunks.
The road's no place for a woman.”
[Illustration: “'Christmas isn't a season...it's a feeling, and, thank
God, I've got it!'”]
“Nonsense!” flashed Emma McChesney. “I've loved it. I've gloried in
it. And I've earned my living by it. Giving it up--don't now think me
ungrateful--won't be so easy, I can tell you.”
T. A. Buck nodded understandingly. “I know. Father knew too. And I don't
want you to let his going from us make any difference in this holiday
season. I want you to enjoy it and be happy.”
A shade crossed Emma McChesney's face. It was there when the door opened
and a boy entered with a telegram. He handed it to Mrs. McChesney. It
held ten crisp words:
_Changed my darn fool mind. Me for home and mother._
Emma McChesney looked up, her face radiant.
“Christmas isn't a season, Mr. Buck. It's a feeling; and, thank God,
I've got it!”
IX
KNEE-DEEP IN KNICKERS
When the column of figures under the heading known as “Profits,” and
the column of figures under the heading known as “Loss” are so unevenly
balanced that the wrong side of the ledger sags, then to the listening
stockholders there comes the painful thought that at the next regular
meeting it is perilously possible that the reading may come under the
heads of Assets and Liabilities.
There had been a meeting in the offices of the T. A. Buck Featherloom
Petticoat Company, New York. The quarterly report had had a startlingly
lop-sided sound. After it was over Mrs. Emma McChesney, secretary of
the company, followed T. A. Buck, its president, into the big, bright
show-room. T. A. Buck's hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His
teeth worried a cigar, savagely. Care, that clawing, mouthing hag,
perched on his brow, tore at his heart.
He turned to face Emma McChesney.
“Well,” he said, bitterly, “it hasn't taken us long, has it? Father's
been dead a little over a year. In that time we've just about run this
great concern, the pride of his life, into the ground.”
Mrs. Emma McChesney, calm, cool, unruffled, scrutinized the harassed man
before her for a long minute.
“What rotten football material you would have made, wouldn't you?” she
observed.
“Oh, I don't know,” answered T. A. Buck, through his teeth. “I can stand
as stiff a scrimmage as the next one. But this isn't a game. You take
things too lightly. You're a woman. I don't think you know what this
means.”
Emma McChesney's lips opened as do those of one whose tongue's end holds
a quick and stinging retort. Then they closed again. She walked over to
the big window that faced the street. When she had stood there a moment,
silent, she swung around and came back to where T. A. Buck stood, still
wrapped in gloom.
“Maybe I don't take myself seriously. I'd have been dead ten years
ago if I had. But I do take my job seriously. Don't forget that for a
minute. You talk the way a man always talks when his pride is hurt.”
“Pride! It isn't that.”
“Oh, yes, it is. I didn't sell T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats on
the road for almost ten years without learning a little something about
men and business. When your father died, and I learned that he had shown
his appreciation of my work and loyalty by making me secretary of
this great company, I didn't think of it as a legacy--a stroke of good
fortune.”
“No?”
“No. To me it was a sacred trust--something to be guarded, nursed,
cherished. And now you say we've run this concern into the ground. Do
you honestly think that?”
T. A. shrugged impotent shoulders. “Figures don't lie.” He plunged into
another fathom of gloom. “Another year like this and we're done for.”
Emma McChesney came over and put one firm hand on T. A. Buck's drooping
shoulder. It was a strange little act for a woman--the sort of thing a
man does when he would hearten another man.
“Wake up!” she said, lightly. “Wake up, and listen to the birdies sing.
There isn't going to be another year like this. Not if the planning,
and scheming, and brain-racking that I've been doing for the last two or
three months mean anything.”
T. A. Buck seated himself as one who is weary, body and mind.
“Got another new one?”
Emma McChesney regarded him a moment thoughtfully. Then she stepped to
the tall show-case, pushed back the sliding glass door, and pointed to
the rows of brilliant-hued petticoats that hung close-packed within.
“Look at 'em!” she commanded, disgust in her voice. “Look at 'em!”
T. A. Buck raised heavy, lack-luster eyes and looked. What he saw did
not seem to interest him. Emma McChesney drew from the rack a skirt of
king's blue satin messaline and held it at arm's length.
“And they call that thing a petticoat! Why, fifteen years ago the
material in this skirt wouldn't have made even a fair-sized sleeve.”
T. A. Buck regarded the petticoat moodily. “I don't see how they get
around in the darned things. I honestly don't see how they wear 'em.”
“That's just it. They don't wear 'em. There you have the root of the
whole trouble.”
“Oh, nonsense!” disputed T. A. “They certainly wear something--some sort
of an--”
“I tell you they don't. Here. Listen. Three years ago our taffeta skirts
ran from thirty-six to thirty-eight yards to the dozen. We paid
from ninety cents to one dollar five a yard. Now our skirts run from
twenty-five to twenty-eight yards to the dozen. The silk costs us
from fifty to sixty cents a yard. Silk skirts used to be a luxury. Now
they're not even a necessity.”
“Well, what's the answer? I've been pondering some petticoat problems
myself. I know we've got to sell three skirts to-day to make the profit
that we used to make on one three years ago.”
Emma McChesney had the brave-heartedness to laugh. “This skirt business
reminds me of a game we used to play when I was a kid. We called it
Going to Jerusalem, I think. Anyway, I know each child sat in a chair
except the one who was It. At a signal everybody had to get up and
change chairs. There was a wild scramble, in which the one who was
It took part. When the burly-burly was over some child was always
chairless, of course. He had to be It. That's the skirt business to-day.
There aren't enough chairs to go round, and in the scramble somebody's
got to be left out. And let me tell you, here and now, that the firm of
T. A. Buck, Featherloom Petticoats, is not going to be It.”
T. A. rose as wearily as he had sat down. Even the most optimistic of
watchers could have discerned no gleam of enthusiasm on his face.
“I thought,” he said listlessly, “that you and I had tried every
possible scheme to stimulate the skirt trade.”
“Every possible one, yes,” agreed Mrs. McChesney, sweetly. “And now it's
time to try the impossible. The possibilities haven't worked. My land!
I could write a book on the Decline and Fall of the Petticoat, beginning
with the billowy white muslin variety, and working up to the present
slinky messaline affair. When I think of those dear dead days of the
glorious--er--past, when the hired girl used to complain and threaten
to leave because every woman in the family had at least three ruffled,
embroidery-flounced white muslin petticoats on the line on Mondays--”
The lines about T. A. Buck's mouth relaxed into a grim smile.
“Remember that feature you got them to run in the _Sunday Sphere?_ The
one headed 'Are Skirts Growing Fuller, and Where?'”
“Do I remember it!” wailed Emma McChesney. “And can I ever forget the
money we put into that fringed model we called the Carmencita! We made
it up so it could retail for a dollar ninety-five, and I could have
sworn that the women would maim each other to get to it. But it didn't
go. They won't even wear fringe around their ankles.”
T. A.'s grim smile stretched into a reminiscent grin. “But nothing in
our whole hopeless campaign could touch your Municipal Purity League
agitation for the abolition of the form-hugging skirt. You talked public
morals until you had A. Comstock and Lucy Page Gaston looking like
Parisian Apaches.”
A little laugh rippled up to Emma McChesney's lips, only to die away to
a sigh. She shook her head in sorrowful remembrance.
“Yes. But what good did it do? The newspapers and magazines did take
it up, but what happened? The dressmakers and tailors, who are charging
more than ever for their work, and putting in half as much material,
got together and knocked my plans into a cocked hat. In answer to those
snap-shots showing what took place every time a woman climbed a car
step, they came back with pictures of the styles of '61, proving that
the street-car effect is nothing to what happened to a belle of '61 if
she chanced to sit down or get up too suddenly in the hoop-skirt days.”
They were both laughing now, like a couple of children. “And, oh, say!”
gasped Emma, “remember Moe Selig, of the Fine-Form Skirt Company,
trying to get the doctors to state that hobble skirts were making women
knock-kneed! Oh, mercy!”
But their laugh ended in a little rueful silence. It was no laughing
matter, this situation. T. A. Buck shrugged his shoulders, and began a
restless pacing up and down. “Yep. There you are. Meanwhile--”
“Meanwhile, women are still wearing 'em tight, and going petticoatless.”
Suddenly T. A. stopped short in his pacing and fastened his surprised
and interested gaze on the skirt of the trim and correct little business
frock that sat so well upon Emma McChesney's pretty figure.
“Why, look at that!” he exclaimed, and pointed with one eager finger.
“Mercy!” screamed Emma McChesney. “What is it? Quick! A mouse?”
T. A. Buck shook his head, impatiently. “Mouse! Lord, no! Plaits!”
“Plaits!”
She looked down, bewildered.
“Yes. In your skirt. Three plaits at the front-left, and three in the
back. That's new, isn't it? If outer skirts are being made fuller, then
it follows--”
“It ought to follow,” interrupted Emma McChesney, “but it doesn't.
It lags way behind. These plaits are stitched down. See? That's the
fiendishness of it. And the petticoat underneath--if there is one--must
be just as smooth, and unwrinkled, and scant as ever. Don't let 'em fool
you.”
Buck spread his palms with a little gesture of utter futility.
“I'm through. Out with your scheme. We're ready for it. It's our last
card, whatever it is.”
There was visible on Emma McChesney's face that little tightening of
the muscles, that narrowing of the eyelids which betokens intense
earnestness; the gathering of all the forces before taking a momentous
step. Then, as quickly, her face cleared. She shook her head with a
little air of sudden decision.
“Not now. Just because it's our last card I want to be sure that I'm
playing it well. I'll be ready for you to-morrow morning in my office.
Come prepared for the jolt of your young life.”
For the first time since the beginning of the conversation a glow of new
courage and hope lighted up T. A. Buck's good-looking features. His fine
eyes rested admiringly upon Emma McChesney standing there by the great
show-case. She seemed to radiate energy, alertness, confidence.
“When you begin to talk like that,” he said, “I always feel as though I
could take hold in a way to make those famous jobs that Hercules tackled
look like little Willie's chores after school.”
“Fine!” beamed Emma McChesney. “Just store that up, will you? And don't
let it filter out at your finger-tips when I begin to talk to-morrow.”
“We'll have lunch together, eh? And talk it over then sociably.”
Mrs. McChesney closed the glass door of the case with a bang.
“No, thanks. My office at 9:30.”
T. A. Buck followed her to the door. “But why not lunch? You never will
take lunch with me. Ever so much more comfortable to talk things over
that way--”
“When I talk business,” said Emma McChesney, pausing at the threshold,
“I want to be surrounded by a business atmosphere. I want the scene
all set--one practical desk, two practical chairs, one telephone, one
letter-basket, one self-filling fountain-pen, et cetera. And when
I lunch I want to lunch, with nothing weightier on my mind than the
question as to whether I'll have chicken livers saute or creamed
sweetbreads with mushrooms.”
“That's no reason,” grumbled T. A. “That's an excuse.”
“It will have to do, though,” replied Mrs. McChesney abruptly, and
passed out as he held the door open for her. He was still standing in
the doorway after her trim, erect figure had disappeared into the little
office across the hail.
The little scarlet leather clock on Emma McChesney's desk pointed
to 9:29 A.M. when there entered her office an immaculately garbed,
miraculously shaven, healthily rosy youngish-middle-aged man who looked
ten years younger than the harassed, frowning T. A. Buck with whom
she had almost quarreled the evening before. Mrs. McChesney was busily
dictating to a sleek little stenographer. The sleek little stenographer
glanced up at T. A. Buck's entrance. The glance, being a feminine one,
embraced all of T. A.'s good points and approved them from the tips of
his modish boots to the crown of his slightly bald head, and including
the creamy-white flower that reposed in his buttonhole.
“'Morning!” said Emma McChesney, looking up briefly. “Be with you in a
minute.... and in reply would say we regret that you have had trouble
with No. 339. It is impossible to avoid pulling at the seams in the
lower-grade silk skirts when they are made up in the present scant
style. Our Mr. Spalding warned you of this at the time of your purchase.
We will not under any circumstances consent to receive the goods if
they are sent back on our hands. Yours sincerely. That'll be all, Miss
Casey.”
She swung around to face her visitor as the door closed. If T. A.
Buck looked ten years younger than he had the afternoon before, Emma
McChesney undoubtedly looked five years older. There were little,
worried, sagging lines about her eyes and mouth.
T. A. Buck's eyes had followed the sheaf of signed correspondence, and
the well-filled pad of more recent dictation which the sleek little
stenographer had carried away with her.
“Good Lord! It looks as though you had stayed down here all night.”
Emma McChesney smiled a little wearily. “Not quite that. But I was here
this morning in time to greet the night watchman. Wanted to get my mail
out of the way.” Her eyes searched T. A. Buck's serene face. Then she
leaned forward, earnestly.
“Haven't you seen the morning paper?”
“Just a mere glance at 'em. Picked up Burrows on the way down, and we
got to talking. Why?”
“The Rasmussen-Welsh Skirt Company has failed. Liabilities three hundred
thousand. Assets one hundred thousand.”
“Failed! Good God!” All the rosy color, all the brisk morning freshness
had vanished from his face. “Failed! Why, girl, I thought that concern
was as solid as Gibraltar.” He passed a worried hand over his head.
“That knocks the wind out of my sails.”
“Don't let it. Just say that it fills them with a new breeze. I'm all
the more sure that the time is ripe for my plan.”
T. A. Buck took from a vest pocket a scrap of paper and a fountain
pen, slid down in his chair, crossed his legs, and began to scrawl
meaningless twists and curlycues, as was his wont when worried or deeply
interested.
“Are you as sure of this scheme of yours as you were yesterday?”
“Sure,” replied Emma McChesney, briskly. “Sartin-sure.”
“Then fire away.”
Mrs. McChesney leaned forward, breathing a trifle fast. Her eyes were
fastened on her listener.
“Here's the plan. We'll make Featherloom Petticoats because there still
are some women who have kept their senses. But we'll make them as a side
line. The thing that has got to keep us afloat until full skirts come
in again will be a full and complete line of women's satin messaline
knickerbockers made up to match any suit or gown, and a full line of
pajamas for women and girls. Get the idea? Scant, smart, trim little
taupe-gray messaline knickers for a taupe gray suit, blue messaline for
blue suits, brown messaline for brown--”
T. A. Buck stared, open-mouthed, the paper on which he had been
scrawling fluttering unnoticed to the floor.
“Look here!” he interrupted. “Is this supposed to be humorous?”
“And,” went on Emma McChesney, calmly, “in our full and complete, not
to say nifty line of women's pajamas--pink pajamas, blue pajamas, violet
pajamas, yellow pajamas, white silk--”
T. A. Buck stood up. “I want to say,” he began, “that if you are
jesting, I think this is a mighty poor time to joke. And if you are
serious I can only deduce from it that this year of business worry and
responsibility has been too much for you. I'm sure that if you were--”
“That's all right,” interrupted Emma McChesney. “Don't apologize. I
purposely broke it to you this way, when I might have approached it
gently. You've done just what I knew you'd do, so it's all right. After
you've thought it over, and sort of got chummy with the idea, you'll be
just as keen on it as I am.”
“Never!”
“Oh, yes, you will. It's the knickerbocker end of it that scares you.
Nothing new or startling about pajamas, except that more and more women
are wearing 'em, and that no girl would dream of going away to school
without her six sets of pajamas. Why, a girl in a regulation nightie
at one of their midnight spreads would be ostracized. Of course I've
thought up a couple of new kinks in 'em--new ways of cutting and all
that, and there's one model--a washable crepe, for traveling, that
doesn't need to be pressed--but I'll talk about that later.”
T. A. Buck was trying to put in a word of objection, but she would have
none of it. But at Emma McChesney's next words his indignation would
brook no barriers.
“Now,” she went on, “the feature of the knickerbockers will be this:
They've got to be ready for the boys' spring trip, and in all the larger
cities, especially in the hustling Middle-Western towns, and along
the coast, too, I'm planning to have the knickerbockers introduced at
private and exclusive exhibitions, and worn by--get this, please--worn
by living models. One big store in each town, see? Half a dozen
good-looking girls--”
“Never!” shouted T. A. Buck, white and shaking. “Never! This firm has
always had a name for dignity, solidness, conservatism--”
“Then it's just about time it lost that reputation. It's all very well
to hang on to your dignity when you're on solid ground, but when you
feel things slipping from under you the thing to do is to grab on to
anything that'll keep you on your feet for a while at least. I tell
you the women will go wild over this knickerbocker idea. They've been
waiting for it.”
“It's a wild-cat scheme,” disputed Buck hotly. “It's a drowning man's
straw, and just about as helpful. I'm a reasonable man--”
“All unreasonable men say that,” smiled Emma McChesney.
“--I'm a reasonable man, I say. And heaven knows I have the interest of
this firm at heart. But this is going too far. If we're going to smash
we'll go decently, and with our name untarnished. Pajamas are bad
enough. But when it comes to the firm of T. A. Buck being represented
by--by--living model hussies stalking about in satin tights like chorus
girls, why--”