"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——"