iron on Tuesday, and bake one-egg cakes, and who have to hurry home to get supper when they go down-town in the afternoon.  They’re the kind who go to market every morning, and take the baby along in the go-cart, and they’re not wearing crepe de chine tango petticoats to do it in, either.  They’re wearing skirts with a drawstring in the back, and a label in the band, guaranteed to last one year.  Those are the people I’d like to reach, and hold.”

“Hm!” said Hopper, from his corner, cryptically.

Bartholomew Berg looked at Emma McChesney admiringly.  “Sounds reasonable and logical,” he said.

Sam Hupp sat up with a jerk.

“It does sound reasonable,” he said briskly.  “But it isn’t.  Pardon me, won’t you, Mrs. McChesney?  But you must realize that this is an extravagant age.  The very workingmen’s wives have caught the spending fever.  The time is past when you can attract people to your goods with the promise of durability and wear.  They don’t expect goods to wear.  They’d resent it if they did.  They get tired of an article before it’s worn out.  They’re looking for novelties.  They’d rather get two months’ wear out of a skirt that’s slashed a new way, than a year’s wear out of one that looks like the sort that mother used to make.”

Mrs. McChesney, her cheeks very pink, her eyes very bright, subsided into silence.  In silence she sat throughout the rest of the conference.  In silence she descended in the elevator with T.A.  Buck, and in silence she stepped into his waiting car.

T.A.  Buck eyed her worriedly.  “Well?” he said.  Then, as Mrs. McChesney shrugged noncommittal shoulders, “Tell me, how do you feel about it?”

Emma McChesney turned to face him, breathing rather quickly.

“The last time I felt as I do just now was when Jock was a baby.  He took sick, and the doctors were puzzled.  They thought it might be something wrong with his spine.  They had a consultation—­five of them—­with the poor little chap on the bed, naked.  They wouldn’t let me in, so I listened in the hallway, pressed against the door with my face to the crack.  They prodded him, and poked him, and worked his little legs and arms, and every time he cried I prayed, and wept, and clawed the door with my fingers, and called them beasts and torturers and begged them to let me in, though I wasn’t conscious that I was doing those things—­at the time.  I didn’t know what they were doing to him, though they said it was all for his good, and they were only trying to help him.  But I only knew that I wanted to rush in, and grab him up in my arms, and run away with him—­run, and run, and run.”

She stopped, lips trembling, eyes suspiciously bright.

“And that’s the way I felt in there—­this afternoon.”

T.A.  Buck reached up and patted her shoulder.  “Don’t, old girl!  It’s going to work out splendidly, I’m sure.  After all, those chaps do know best.”

“They may know best, but they don’t know Featherlooms,” retorted Emma McChesney.