her plunge into the innermost depths of
the clothes-closet.

"What's the idea, Emma?"

"Looking for something," came back his wife's muffled tones.

A long wait.

"Can I help?"

"I've got it!" cried Emma, and emerged triumphant, flushed, smiling,
holding a garment at arm's length, aloft.

"What----"

Emma shook it smartly, turned it this way and that, held it up under
her chin by the sleeves.

"Why, girl!" exclaimed Buck, all a-grin, "it's the----"

"The blue serge," Emma finished for him, "with the white collars and
cuffs. And what's more, young man, it's the little blue hat with the
what-cha-ma-call-ems on it. And praise be! I'm wearing 'em both
down-town to-morrow morning."

V

"HOOPS, MY DEAR!"

Emma McChesney Buck always vigorously disclaimed any knowledge of that
dreamy-eyed damsel known as Inspiration. T. A. Buck, her
husband-partner, accused her of being on intimate terms with the lady.
So did the adoring office staff of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat
Company. Out in the workshop itself, the designers and cutters, those
jealous artists of the pencil, shears, and yardstick, looked on in awed
admiration on those rare occasions when the feminine member of the
business took the scissors in her firm white hands and slashed boldly
into a shimmering length of petticoat-silk. When she put down the
great shears, there lay on the table the detached parts of that which
the appreciative and experienced eyes of the craftsmen knew to be a new
and original variation of that elastic garment known as the underskirt.

For weeks preceding one of these cutting-exhibitions, Emma was likely
to be not quite her usual brisk self. A mystic glow replaced the alert
brightness of her eye. Her wide-awake manner gave way to one of almost
sluggish inactivity.

The outer office, noting these things, would lift its eyebrows
significantly.

"Another hunch!" it would whisper. "The last time she beat the rest of
the trade by six weeks with that elastic-top gusset."

"Inspiration working, Emma?" T. A. Buck would ask, noting the symptoms.

"It isn't inspiration, T. A. Nothing of the kind! It's just an attack
of imagination, complicated by clothes-instinct."

"That's all that ails Poiret," Buck would retort.

Early in the autumn, when women were still walking with an absurd
sidewise gait, like a duck, or a filly that is too tightly hobbled, the
junior partner of the firm began to show unmistakable signs o