“Nothing theatrical this time,” she assured him. “Don't expect a show such as you got when I touched off the last fuse.”
An eager, expectant look was replacing the gloom that bad clouded his face. “Spring it.”
Emma McChesney waited a moment; then, “I think the time has come to put in another line—a staple. It's—flannel nightgowns.”
“Flannel nightgowns!” Disgust shivered through Buck's voice. “Flannel nightgowns! They quit wearing those when Broadway was a cow-path.”
“Did, eh?” retorted Emma McChesney. “That's the New-Yorker speaking. Just because the French near-actresses at the Winter Garden wear silk lace and sea-foam nighties in their imported boudoir skits, and just because they display only those frilly, beribboned handmade affairs in the Fifth Avenue shop-windows, don't you ever think that they're a national vice. Let me tell you,” she went on as T. A. Buck's demeanor grew more bristlingly antagonistic, “there are thousands and thousands of women up in Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Michigan, and Oregon, and Alaska, and Nebraska, and Dakota who are thankful to retire every night protected by one long, thick, serviceable flannel nightie, and one practical hot-water bag. Up in those countries retiring isn't a social rite: it's a feat of hardihood. I'm keen for a line of plain, full, roomy old-fashioned flannel nightgowns of the improved T. A. Buck Featherloom products variety. They'll be wearing 'em long after knickerbockers have been cut up for patchwork.”
The moody look was quite absent from T. A. Buck's face now, and the troubled look from Emma McChesney's eyes.
“Well,” Buck said grudgingly, “if you were to advise making up a line of the latest models in deep-sea divers' uniforms, I suppose I'd give in. But flannel nightgowns! In the twentieth century—flannel night—”
“Think it over,” laughed Emma McChesney as he opened the door. “We'll have it out, tooth and nail, when you get back.”
The door closed upon him. Emma McChesney and her son were left alone in their new home to be.
“Turn out the light, son,” said Emma McChesney, “and come to the window. There's a view! Worth the money, alone.”