nd they're happy. I suppose I might have been one, too, if I hadn't
been obliged to get out and hustle. But it's too late to learn now.
Besides, I don't want to. If I do try, I'll be destroying the very
thing that attracted you to me in the first place. Remember what you
said about the Fifth Avenue girl?"

"But, Emma," interrupted Buck very quietly, "I don't want you to try."

Emma, with a rush of words at her very lips, paused, eyed him for a
doubtful moment, asked a faltering question.

"But it was your plan--you said you wanted me to be here when you came
home and when you left, didn't you? Do you mean you----"

"I mean that I've missed my business partner every minute for three
months. All the time we've been going to those fool dinners and all
that kind of thing, I've been bursting to talk skirts to you. I--say,
Emma, Adler's designed a new model--a full one, of course, but there's
something wrong with it. I can't put my finger on the flaw, but----"

Emma came swiftly over to his chair.

"Make a sketch of it, can't you?" she said. From his pocket Buck drew
a pencil, an envelope, and fell to sketching rapidly, squinting down
through his cigar smoke as he worked.

"It's like this," he began, absorbed and happy; "you see, where the
fulness begins at the knee----"

"Yes!" prompted Emma, breathlessly.

Two hours later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper.
But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a
perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation of a
task accomplished.

Emma straightened, leaned back, sighed--a victorious, happy sigh.

"And to think," she said, marveling, "to think that I once envied the
women who had nothing to do but the things I've done in the last three
months!"

Buck had risen, stretched luxuriously, yawned. Now he came over to his
wife and took her head in his two hands, cozily, and stood a moment
looking into her shining eyes.

"Emma, I may have mentioned this once or twice before, but perhaps
you'll still be interested to know that I think you're a wonder. A
wonder! You're the----"

"Oh, well, we won't quarrel about that," smiled Emma brazenly. "But I
wonder if Adler will agree with us when he sees what we've done to his
newest skirt design."

Suddenly a new thought seemed to strike her. She was off down the
hall. Buck, following in a leisurely manner, hands in pockets, stood
in the bedroom door and watched