aze. The paper
fell to the floor with a little slap. Both stooped for it,
apologetically. Their heads bumped. They staggered back, semi-stunned.

Emma found herself laughing, rather wildly. Buck joined in after a
moment--a rueful laugh. She was the first to recover.

"That settles it. I'm willing to eat trick bread and whale meat and
drink sugarless coffee, but I draw the line at hating my husband for the
price of a newspaper subscription. White paper may be scarce but so are
husbands. It's cheaper to get two newspapers than to set up two
establishments."

They were only two among many millions who, at that time, were playing
an amusing and fashionable game called Win the War. They did not realize
that the game was to develop into a grim and magnificently functioning
business to whose demands they would cheerfully sacrifice all that they
most treasured.

Of late, Emma had spent less and less time in the offices of the
Featherloom Company. For more than ten years that flourishing business,
and the career of her son, Jock McChesney, had been the twin orbits
about which her existence had revolved. But Jock McChesney was a man of
family now, with a wife, two babies, and an uncanny advertising sense
that threatened to put his name on the letterhead of the Raynor
Advertising Company of Chicago. As for the Featherloom factory--it
seemed to go of its own momentum. After her marriage to the firm's head,
Emma's interest in the business was unflagging.

"Now look here, Emma," Buck would say. "You've given enough to this
firm. Play a while. Cut up. Forget you're the 'And Company' in T.A. Buck
& Co."

"But I'm so used to it. I'd miss it so. You know what happened that
first year of our marriage when I tried to do the duchess. I don't know
how to loll. If you take Featherlooms away from me I'll degenerate into
a Madam Chairman. You'll see."

She might have, too, if the War had not come along and saved her.

By midsummer the workrooms were turning out strange garments, such as
gray and khaki flannel shirts, flannelette one-piece pajamas, and
woollen bloomers, all intended for the needs of women war workers going
abroad.

Emma had dropped into the workroom one day and had picked up a
half-finished gray flannel garment. She eyed it critically, her deft
fingers manipulating the neckband. A little frown gathered between her
eyes.

"Somehow a woman in a flannel shirt always looks as if she had quinsy.
It's the collar. They cu