“mr. fenger will see you now.” mr. fenger, general manager, had been a long time about it. this heel-cooling experience was new to fanny brandeis. it had always been her privilege to keep others waiting. still, she felt no resentment as she sat in michael fenger's outer office. for as she sat there, waiting, she was getting a distinct impression of this unseen man whose voice she could just hear as he talked over the telephone in his inner office. it was characteristic of michael fenger that his personality reached out and touched you before you came into actual contact with the man. fanny had heard of him long before she came to haynes-cooper. he was the genie of that glittering lamp. all through the gigantic plant (she had already met department heads, buyers, merchandise managers) one heard his name, and felt the impress of his mind:

“you'll have to see mr. fenger about that.”

“yes,”—pointing to a new conveyor, perhaps,—“that has just been installed. it's a great help to us. doubles our shipping-room efficiency. we used to use baskets, pulled by a rope. it's mr. fenger's idea.”

efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. fenger had made it a slogan in the haynes-cooper plant long before the german nation forced it into our everyday vocabulary. michael fenger was system. he could take a muddle of orders, a jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective unit. untangling snarls was his pastime. esprit de corps was his shibboleth. order and management his idols. and his war-cry was “results!”

it was eleven o'clock when fanny came into his outer office. the very atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. there hung about the place an air of repressed expectancy. the room was electrically charged with the high-voltage of the man in the inner office. his secretary was a spare, middle-aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff-brown and spectacles; his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and anxious; his office boy a stern youth in knickers, who bore no relation to the slangy, gum-chewing, redheaded office boy of the comic sections.

the low-pitched, high-powered voice went on inside, talking over the long-distance telephone. fenger was the kind of man who is always talking to new york when he is in chicago, and to chicago when he is in new york. trains with the word limited after them were invented for him and his type. a buzzer sounded. it galvanized the office boy into instant action. it brought the anxious-looking stenographer to the doorway, notebook in hand, ready. it sent the lean secretary out, and up to fanny.

“temper,” said fanny, to herself, “or horribly nervous and high-keyed. they jump like a set of puppets on a string.”

it was then that the lean secretary had said, “mr. fenger will see you now.”

fanny was aware of a pleasant little tingle of excitement. she entered the inner office.

it was characteristic of michael fenger that he employed no cheap tricks. he was not writing as fanny brandeis came in. he was not telephoning. he was not doing anything but standing at his desk, waiting for fanny brandeis. as she came in he looked at her, through her, and she seemed to feel her mental processes laid open to him as a skilled surgeon cuts through skin and flesh and fat, to lay bare the muscles and nerves and vital organs beneath. he put out his hand. fanny extended hers. they met in a silent grip. it was like a meeting between two men. even as he indexed her, fanny's alert mind was busy docketing, numbering, cataloguing him. they had in common a certain force, a driving power. fanny seated herself opposite him, in obedience to a gesture. he crossed his legs comfortably and sat back in his big desk chair. a great-bodied man, with powerful square shoulders, a long head, a rugged crest of a nose—the kind you see on the type of englishman who has the imagination and initiative to go to canada, or australia, or america. he wore spectacles, not the fashionable horn-rimmed sort, but the kind with gold ear pieces. they were becoming, and gave a certain humanness to a face that otherwise would have been too rugged, too strong. a man of forty-five, perhaps.

he spoke first. “you're younger than i thought.”

“so are you.”

“old inside.”

“so am i.”

he uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, folded his arms on the desk.

“you've been through the plant, miss brandeis?”

“yes. twice. once with a regular tourist party. and once with the special guide.” “good. go through the plant whenever you can. don't stick to your own department. it narrows one.” he paused a moment. “did you think that this opportunity to come to haynes-cooper, as assistant to the infants' wear department buyer was just a piece of luck, augmented by a little pulling on your part?”

“yes.”

“it wasn't. you were carefully picked by me, and i don't expect to find i've made a mistake. i suppose you know very little about buying and selling infants' wear?”

“less than about almost any other article in the world—at least, in the department store, or mail order world.”

“i thought so. and it doesn't matter. i pretty well know your history, which means that i know your training. you're young; you're ambitious, you're experienced; you're imaginative. there's no length you can't go, with these. it just depends on how farsighted your mental vision is. now listen, miss brandeis: i'm not going to talk to you in millions. the guides do enough of that. but you know we do buy and sell in terms of millions, don't you? well, our infants' wear department isn't helping to roll up the millions; and it ought to, because there are millions of babies born every year, and the golden-spoon kind are in the minority. i've decided that that department needs a woman, your kind of woman. now, as a rule, i never employ a woman when i can use a man. there's only one other woman filling a really important position in the merchandise end of this business. that's ella monahan, head of the glove department, and she's a genius. she is a woman who is limited in every other respect—just average; but she knows glove materials in a way that's uncanny. i'd rather have a man in her place; but i don't happen to know any men glove-geniuses. tell me, what do you think of that etching?”

fanny tried—and successfully—not to show the jolt her mind had received as she turned to look at the picture to which his finger pointed. she got up and strolled over to it, and she was glad her suit fitted and hung as it did in the back.

“i don't like it particularly. i like it less than any other etching you have here.” the walls were hung with them. “of course you understand i know nothing about them. but it's too flowery, isn't it, to be good? too many lines. like a writer who spoils his effect by using too many words.”

fenger came over and stood beside her, staring at the black and white and gray thing in its frame. “i felt that way, too.” he stared down at her, then. “jew?” he asked.

a breathless instant. “no,” said fanny brandeis.

michael fenger smiled for the first time. fanny brandeis would have given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to take back that monosyllable. she was gripped with horror at what she had done. she had spoken almost mechanically. and yet that monosyllable must have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought. “now i begin to understand you,” fenger went on. “you've decided to lop off all the excrescences, eh? well, i can't say that i blame you. a woman in business is handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex.” he stared at her again. “too bad you're so pretty.”

“i'm not!” said fanny hotly, like a school-girl.

“that's a thing that can't be argued, child. beauty's subjective, you know.”

“i don't see what difference it makes, anyway.”

“oh, yes, you do.” he stopped. “or perhaps you don't, after all. i forget how young you are. well, now, miss brandeis, you and your woman's mind, and your masculine business experience and sense are to be turned loose on our infants' wear department. the buyer, mr. slosson, is going to resent you. naturally. i don't know whether we'll get results from you in a month, or six months or a year. or ever. but something tells me we're going to get them. you've lived in a small town most of your life. and we want that small-town viewpoint. d'you think you've got it?”

fanny was on her own ground here. “if knowing the wisconsin small-town woman, and the wisconsin farmer woman—and man too, for that matter—means knowing the oregon, and wyoming, and pennsylvania, and iowa people of the same class, then i've got it.”

“good!” michael fenger stood up. “i'm not going to load you down with instructions, or advice. i think i'll let you grope your own way around, and bump your head a few times. then you'll learn where the low places are. and, miss brandeis, remember that suggestions are welcome in this plant. we take suggestions all the way from the elevator starter to the president.” his tone was kindly, but not hopeful.

fanny was standing too, her mental eye on the door. but now she turned to face him squarely.

“do you mean that?”

“absolutely.”

“well, then, i've one to make. your stock boys and stock girls walk miles and miles every day, on every floor of this fifteen-story building. i watched them yesterday, filling up the bins, carrying orders, covering those enormous distances from one bin to another, up one aisle and down the next, to the office, back again. your floors are concrete, or cement, or some such mixture, aren't they? i just happened to think of the boy who used to deliver our paper on norris street, in winnebago, wisconsin. he covered his route on roller skates. it saved him an hour. why don't you put roller skates on your stock boys and girls?”

fenger stared at her. you could almost hear that mind of his working, like a thing on ball bearings. “roller skates.” it wasn't an exclamation. it was a decision. he pressed a buzzer—the snuff-brown secretary buzzer. “tell clancy i want him. now.” he had not glanced up, or taken his eyes from fanny. she was aware of feeling a little uncomfortable, but elated, too. she moved toward the door. fenger stood at his desk. “wait a minute.” fanny waited. still fenger did not speak. finally, “i suppose you know you've earned six months' salary in the last five minutes.”

fanny eyed him coolly. “considering the number of your stock force, the time, energy, and labor saved, including wear and tear on department heads and their assistants, i should say that was a conservative statement.” and she nodded pleasantly, and left him.

two days later every stock clerk in the vast plant was equipped with light-weight roller skates. they made a sort of carnival of it at first. there were some spills, too, going around corners, and a little too much hilarity. that wore off in a week. in two weeks their roller skates were part of them; just shop labor-savers. the report presented to fenger was this: time and energy saved, fifty-five per cent; stock staff decreased by one third. the picturesqueness of it, the almost ludicrous simplicity of the idea appealed to the entire plant. it tickled the humor sense in every one of the ten thousand employees in that vast organization. in the first week of her association with haynes-cooper fanny brandeis was actually more widely known than men who had worked there for years. the president, nathan haynes himself, sent for her, chuckling.

nathan haynes—but then, why stop for him? nathan haynes had been swallowed, long ago, by this monster plant that he himself had innocently created. you must have visited it, this gargantuan thing that sprawls its length in the very center of chicago, the giant son of a surprised father. it is one of the city's show places, like the stockyards, the art institute, and field's. fifteen years before, a building had been erected to accommodate a prosperous mail order business. it had been built large and roomy, with plenty of seams, planned amply, it was thought, to allow the boy to grow. it would do for twenty-five years, surely. in ten years haynes-cooper was bursting its seams. in twelve it was shamelessly naked, its arms and legs sticking out of its inadequate garments. new red brick buildings another—another. five stories added to this one, six stories to that, a new fifteen story merchandise building.

the firm began to talk in tens of millions. its stock became gilt-edged, unattainable. lucky ones who had bought of it diffidently, discreetly, with modest visions of four and a half per cent in their unimaginative minds, saw their dividends doubling, trebling, quadrupling, finally soaring gymnastically beyond all reason. listen to the old guide who (at fifteen a week) takes groups of awed visitors through the great plant. how he juggles figures; how grandly they roll off his tongue. how glib he is with nathan haynes's millions.

“this, ladies and gentlemen, is our mail department. from two thousand to twenty-five hundred pounds of mail, comprising over one hundred thousand letters, are received here every day. yes, madam, i said every day. about half of these letters are orders. last year the banking department counted one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. one hundred and thirty millions!” he stands there in his ill-fitting coat, and his star, and rubs one bony hand over the other.

“dear me!” says a lady tourist from idaho, rather inadequately. and yet, not so inadequately. what exclamation is there, please, that fits a sum like one hundred and thirty millions of anything?

fanny brandeis, fresh from winnebago, wisconsin, slipped into the great scheme of things at the haynes-cooper plant like part of a perfectly planned blue print. it was as though she had been thought out and shaped for this particular corner. and the reason for it was, primarily, winnebago, wisconsin. for haynes-cooper grew and thrived on just such towns, with their surrounding farms and villages. haynes-cooper had their fingers on the pulse and heart of the country as did no other industry. they were close, close. when rugs began to take the place of ingrain carpets it was haynes-cooper who first sensed the change. oh, they had had them in new york years before, certainly. but after all, it isn't new york's artistic progress that shows the development of this nation. it is the thing they are thinking, and doing, and learning in backwash, nebraska, that marks time for these united states. there may be a certain significance in the announcement that new york has dropped the russian craze and has gone in for that quaint chinese stuff. my dear, it makes the loveliest hangings and decorations. when fifth avenue takes down its filet lace and eyelet embroidered curtains, and substitutes severe shantung and chaste net, there is little in the act to revolutionize industry, or stir the art-world. but when the haynes-cooper company, by referring to its inventory ledgers, learns that it is selling more alma gluck than harry lauder records; when its statistics show that tchaikowsky is going better than irving berlin, something epochal is happening in the musical progress of a nation. and when the orders from noose gulch, nevada, are for those plain dimity curtains instead of the cheap and gaudy nottingham atrocities, there is conveyed to the mind a fact of immense, of overwhelming significance. the country has taken a step toward civilization and good taste.

so. you have a skeleton sketch of haynes-cooper, whose feelers reach the remotest dugout in the yukon, the most isolated cabin in the rockies, the loneliest ranch-house in wyoming; the montana mining shack, the bleak maine farm, the plantation in virginia.

and the man who had so innocently put life into this monster? a plumpish, kindly-faced man; a bewildered, gentle, unimaginative and somewhat frightened man, fresh-cheeked, eye-glassed. in his suite of offices in the new administration building—built two years ago—marble and oak throughout—twelve stories, and we're adding three already; offices all two-toned rugs, and leather upholstery, with dim, rich, brown-toned dutch masterpieces on the walls, he sat helpless and defenseless while the torrent of millions rushed, and swirled, and foamed about him. i think he had fancied, fifteen years ago, that he would some day be a fairly prosperous man; not rich, as riches are counted nowadays, but with a comfortable number of tens of thousands tucked away. two or three hundred thousand; perhaps five hundred thousand!—perhaps a—but, nonsense! nonsense!

and then the thing had started. it was as when a man idly throws a pebble into a chasm, or shoves a bit of ice with the toe of his boot, and starts a snow-slide that grows as it goes. he had started this avalanche of money, and now it rushed on of its own momentum, plunging, rolling, leaping, crashing, and as it swept on it gathered rocks, trees, stones, houses, everything that lay in its way. it was beyond the power of human hand to stop this tumbling, roaring slide. in the midst of it sat nathan haynes, deafened, stunned, terrified at the immensity of what he had done.

he began giving away huge sums, incredible sums. it piled up faster than he could give it away. and so he sat there in the office hung with the dim old masterpieces, and tried to keep simple, tried to keep sane, with that austerity that only mad wealth can afford—or bitter poverty. he caused the land about the plant to be laid out in sunken gardens and baseball fields and tennis courts, so that one approached this monster of commerce through enchanted grounds, glowing with tulips and heady hyacinths in spring, with roses in june, blazing with salvia and golden-glow and asters in autumn. there was something apologetic about these grounds.

this, then, was the environment that fanny brandeis had chosen. on the face of things you would have said she had chosen well. the inspiration of the roller skates had not been merely a lucky flash. that idea had been part of the consistent whole. her mind was her mother's mind raised to the nth power, and enhanced by the genius she was trying to crush. refusing to die, it found expression in a hundred brilliant plans, of which the roller skate idea was only one.

fanny had reached chicago on sunday. she had entered the city as a queen enters her domain, authoritatively, with no fear upon her, no trepidation, no doubts. she had gone at once to the mendota hotel, on michigan avenue, up-town, away from the roar of the loop. it was a residential hotel, very quiet, decidedly luxurious. she had no idea of making it her home. but she would stay there until she could find an apartment that was small, bright, near the lake, and yet within fairly reasonable transportation facilities for her work. her room was on the ninth floor, not on the michigan avenue side, but east, overlooking the lake. she spent hours at the windows, fascinated by the stone and steel city that lay just below with the incredible blue of the sail-dotted lake beyond, and at night, with the lights spangling the velvety blackness, the flaring blaze of thirty-first street's chop-suey restaurants and moving picture houses at the right; and far, far away, the red and white eye of the lighthouse winking, blinking, winking, blinking, the rumble and clank of a flat-wheeled indiana avenue car, the sound of high laughter and a snatch of song that came faintly up to her from the speeding car of some midnight joy-riders!

but all this had to do with her other side. it had no bearing on haynes-cooper, and business. business! that was it. she had trained herself for it, like an athlete. eight hours of sleep. a cold plunge on arising. sane food. long walks. there was something terrible about her earnestness.

on monday she presented herself at the haynes-cooper plant. monday and tuesday were spent in going over the great works. it was an exhausting process, but fascinating beyond belief. it was on wednesday that she had been summoned for the talk with michael fenger. thursday morning she was at her desk at eight-thirty. it was an obscure desk, in a dingy corner of the infants' wear department, the black sheep section of the great plant. her very presence in that corner seemed to change it magically. you must remember how young she was, how healthy, how vigorous, with the freshness of the small town still upon her. it was health and youth, and vigor that gave that gloss to her hair (conscientious brushing too, perhaps), that color to her cheeks and lips, that brightness to her eyes. but crafty art and her dramatic instinct were responsible for the tailored severity of her costume, for the whiteness of her blouse, the trim common-sense expensiveness of her shoes and hat and gloves.

slosson, buyer and head of the department, came in at nine. fanny rose to greet him. she felt a little sorry for slosson. in her mind she already knew him for a doomed man.

“well, well!”—he was the kind of person who would say, well, well!—“you're bright and early, miss—ah—”

“brandeis.”

“yes, certainly; miss brandeis. well, nothing like making a good start.”

“i wanted to go through the department by myself,” said fanny. “the shelves and bins, and the numbering system. i see that your new maternity dresses have just come in.”

“oh, yes. how do you like them?”

“i think they're unnecessarily hideous, mr. slosson.”

“my dear young lady, a plain garment is what they want. unnoticeable.”

“unnoticeable, yes; but becoming. at such a time a woman is at her worst. if she can get it, she at least wants a dress that doesn't add to her unattractiveness.”

“let me see—you are not—ah—married, i believe, miss brandeis?”

“no.”

“i am. three children. all girls.” he passed a nervous hand over his head, rumpling his hair a little. “an expensive proposition, let me tell you, three girls. but there's very little i don't know about babies, as you may imagine.”

but there settled over fanny brandeis' face the mask of hardness that was so often to transform it.

the morning mail was in—the day's biggest grist, deluge of it, a flood. buyer and assistant buyer never saw the actual letters, or attended to their enclosed orders. it was only the unusual letter, the complaint or protest that reached their desk. hundreds of hands downstairs sorted, stamped, indexed, filed, after the letter-opening machines had slit the envelopes. those letter-openers! fanny had hung over them, enthralled. the unopened envelopes were fed into them. flip! zip! flip! out! opened! faster than eye could follow. it was uncanny. it was, somehow, humorous, like the clever antics of a trained dog. you could not believe that this little machine actually performed what your eyes beheld. two years later they installed the sand-paper letter-opener, marvel of simplicity. it made the old machine seem cumbersome and slow. guided by izzy, the expert, its rough tongue was capable of licking open six hundred and fifty letters a minute.

ten minutes after the mail came in the orders were being filled; bins, shelves, warehouses, were emptying their contents. up and down the aisles went the stock clerks; into the conveyors went the bundles, down the great spiral bundle chute, into the shipping room, out by mail, by express, by freight. this leghorn hat for a nebraska country belle; a tombstone for a rancher's wife; a plow, brave in its red paint; coffee, tea, tinned fruit, bound for alaska; lace, muslin, sheeting, toweling, all intended for the coarse trousseau of a georgia bride.

it was not remarkable that fanny brandeis fitted into this scheme of things. for years she had ministered to the wants of just this type of person. the letters she saw at haynes-cooper's read exactly as customers had worded their wants at brandeis' bazaar. the magnitude of the thing thrilled her, the endless possibilities of her own position.

during the first two months of her work there she was as unaggressive as possible. she opened the very pores of her mind and absorbed every detail of her department. but she said little, followed slosson's instructions in her position as assistant buyer, and suggested no changes. slosson's wrinkle of anxiety smoothed itself away, and his manner became patronizingly authoritative again. fanny seemed to have become part of the routine of the place. fenger did not send for her. june and july were insufferably hot. fanny seemed to thrive, to expand like a flower in the heat, when others wilted and shriveled. the spring catalogue was to be made up in october, as always, six months in advance. the first week in august fanny asked for an interview with fenger. slosson was to be there. at ten o'clock she entered fenger's inner office. he was telephoning—something about dinner at the union league club. his voice was suave, his tone well modulated, his accent correct, his english faultless. and yet fanny brandeis, studying the etchings on his wall, her back turned to him, smiled to herself. the voice, the tone, the accent, the english, did not ring true they were acquired graces, exquisite imitations of the real thing. fanny brandeis knew. she was playing the same game herself. she understood this man now, after two months in the haynes-cooper plant. these marvelous examples of the etcher's art, for example. they were the struggle for expression of a man whose youth had been bare of such things. his love for them was much the same as that which impels the new made millionaire to buy rare pictures, rich hangings, tapestries, rugs, not so much in the desire to impress the world with his wealth as to satisfy the craving for beauty, the longing to possess that which is exquisite, and fine, and almost unobtainable. you have seen how a woman, long denied luxuries, feeds her starved senses on soft silken things, on laces and gleaming jewels, for pure sensuous delight in their feel and look.

thus fanny mused as she eyed these treasures—grim, deft, repressed things, done with that economy of line which is the test of the etcher's art.

fenger hung up the receiver.

“so it's taken you two months, miss brandeis. i was awfully afraid, from the start you made, that you'd be back here in a week, bursting with ideas.”

fanny smiled, appreciatively. he had come very near the truth. “i had to use all my self-control, that first week. after that it wasn't so hard.”

fenger's eyes narrowed upon her. “pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?”

“yes,” said fanny. she came over to his desk.

“i wish we needn't have mr. slosson here this morning. after all, he's been here for years, and i'm practically an upstart. he's so much older, too. i—i hate to hurt him. i wish you'd—”

but fenger shook his head. “slosson's due now. and he has got to take his medicine. this is business, miss brandeis. you ought to know what that means. for that matter, it may be that you haven't hit upon an idea. in that case, slosson would have the laugh, wouldn't he?”

slosson entered at that moment. and there was a chip on his shoulder. it was evident in the way he bristled, in the way he seated himself. his fingers drummed his knees. he was like a testy, hum-ha stage father dealing with a willful child.

fenger took out his watch.

“now, miss brandeis.”

fanny took a chair facing the two men, and crossed her trim blue serge knees, and folded her hands in her lap. a deep pink glowed in her cheeks. her eyes were very bright. all the molly brandeis in her was at the surface, sparkling there. and she looked almost insultingly youthful.

“you—you want me to talk?”

“we want you to talk. we have time for just three-quarters of an hour of uninterrupted conversation. if you've got anything to say you ought to say it in that time. now, miss brandeis, what's the trouble with the haynes-cooper infants' wear department?”

and fanny brandeis took a long breath

“the trouble with the haynes-cooper infants' wear department is that it doesn't understand women. there are millions of babies born every year. an incredible number of them are mail order babies. i mean by that they are born to tired, clumsy-fingered immigrant women, to women in mills and factories, to women on farms, to women in remote villages. they're the type who use the mail order method. i've learned this one thing about that sort of woman: she may not want that baby, but either before or after it's born she'll starve, and save, and go without proper clothing, and even beg, and steal to give it clothes—clothes with lace on them, with ribbon on them, sheer white things. i don't know why that's true, but it is. well, we're not reaching them. our goods are unattractive. they're packed and shipped unattractively. why, all this department needs is a little psychology—and some lace that doesn't look as if it had been chopped out with an ax. it's the little, silly, intimate things that will reach these women. no, not silly, either. quite understandable. she wants fine things for her baby, just as the silver-spoon mother does. the thing we'll have to do is to give her silver-spoon models at pewter prices.”

“it can't be done,” said slosson.

“now, wait a minute, slosson,” fenger put in, smoothly. “miss brandeis has given us a very fair general statement. we'll have some facts. are you prepared to give us an actual working plan?”

“yes. at least, it sounds practical to me. and if it does to you—and to mr. slosson—”

“humph!” snorted that gentleman, in expression of defiance, unbelief, and a determination not to be impressed.

it acted as a goad to fanny. she leaned forward in her chair and talked straight at the big, potent force that sat regarding her in silent attention.

“i still say that we can copy the high-priced models in low-priced materials because, in almost every case, it isn't the material that makes the expensive model; it's the line, the cut, the little trick that gives it style. we can get that. we've been giving them stuff that might have been made by prison labor, for all the distinction it had. then i think we ought to make a feature of the sanitary methods used in our infants' department. every article intended for a baby's use should be wrapped or boxed as it lies in the bin or on the shelf. and those bins ought to be glassed. we would advertise that, and it would advertise itself. our visitors would talk about it. this department hasn't been getting a square deal in the catalogue. not enough space. it ought to have not only more catalogue space, but a catalogue all its own—the baby book. full of pictures. good ones. illustrations that will make every mother think her baby will look like that baby, once it is wearing our no. 29e798—chubby babies, curly-headed, and dimply. and the feature of that catalogue ought to be, not separate garments, but complete outfits. outfits boxed, ready for shipping, and ranging in price all the way from twenty-five dollars to three-ninety-eight—”

“it can't be done!” yelled slosson. “three-ninety-eight! outfits!”

“it can be done. i've figured it out, down to a packet of assorted size safety pins. we'll call it our emergency outfit. thirty pieces. and while we're about it, every outfit over five dollars ought to be packed in a pink or a pale blue pasteboard box. the outfits trimmed in pink, pink boxes; the outfits trimmed in blue, blue boxes. in eight cases out of ten their letters will tell us whether it's a pink or blue baby. and when they get our package, and take out that pink or blue box, they'll be as pleased as if we'd made them a present. it's the personal note—”

“personal slop!” growled slosson. “it isn't business. it's sentimental slush!”

“sentimental, yes,” agreed fanny pleasantly, “but then, we're running the only sentimental department in this business. and we ought to be doing it at the rate of a million and a quarter a year. if you think these last suggestions sentimental, i'm afraid the next one—”

“let's have it, miss brandeis,” fenger encouraged her quietly.

“it's”—she flashed a mischievous smile at slosson—“it's a mother's guide and helper, and adviser. a woman who'll answer questions, give advice. some one they'll write to, with a picture in their minds of a large, comfortable, motherly-looking person in gray. you know we get hundreds of letters asking whether they ought to order flannel bands, or the double-knitted kind. that sort of thing. and who's been answering them? some sixteen-year-old girl in the mailing department who doesn't know a flannel band from a bootee when she sees it. we could call our woman something pleasant and everydayish, like emily brand. easy to remember. and until we can find her, i'll answer those letters myself. they're important to us as well as to the woman who writes them. and now, there's the matter of obstetrical outfits. three grades, packed ready for shipment, practical, simple, and complete. our drug section has the separate articles, but we ought to—”

“oh, lord!” groaned slosson, and slumped disgustedly in his seat.

but fenger got up, came over to fanny, and put a hand on her shoulder for a moment. he looked down at her. “i knew you'd do it.” he smiled queerly. “tell me, where did you learn all this?”

“i don't know,” faltered fanny happily. “brandeis' bazaar, perhaps. it's just another case of plush photograph album.”

“plush—?”

fanny told him that story. even the discomfited slosson grinned at it.

but after ten minutes more of general discussion slosson left. fenger, without putting it in words, had conveyed that to him. fanny stayed. they did things that way at haynes-cooper. no waste. no delay. that she had accomplished in two months that which ordinarily takes years was not surprising. they did things that way, too, at haynes-cooper. take the case of nathan haynes himself. and michael fenger too who, not so many years before, had been a machine-boy in a racine woolen mill.

for my part, i confess that fanny brandeis begins to lose interest for me. big business seems to dwarf the finer things in her. that red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl, absorbed in zola and peanut brittle in the winnebago library, was infinitely more appealing than this glib and capable young woman. the spitting wildcat of the street fight so long ago was gentler by far than this cool person who was so deliberately taking his job away from slosson. you, too, feel that way about her? that is as it should be. it is the penalty they pay who, given genius, sympathy, and understanding as their birthright, trade them for the tawdry trinkets money brings.

perhaps the last five minutes of that conference between fanny and michael fenger reveals a new side, and presents something of interest. it was a harrowing and unexpected five minutes.

you may remember how michael fenger had a way of looking at one, silently. it was an intent and concentrated gaze that had the effect of an actual physical hold. most people squirmed under it. fanny, feeling it on her now, frowned and rose to leave.

“shall you want to talk these things over again? of course i've only outlined them, roughly. you gave me so little time.”

fenger, at his desk, did not answer, or turn away his gaze. a little blaze of wrath flamed into fanny's face.

“general manager or not,” she said, very low-voiced, “i wish you wouldn't sit and glower at me like that. it's rude, and it's disconcerting,” which was putting it forthrightly.

“i beg your pardon!” fenger came swiftly around the desk, and over to her. “i was thinking very hard. miss brandeis, will you dine with me somewhere tonight? then to-morrow night? but i want to talk to you.”

“here i am. talk.”

“but i want to talk to—you.”

it was then that fanny brandeis saved an ugly situation. for she laughed, a big, wholesome, outdoors sort of laugh. she was honestly amused.

“my dear mr. fenger, you've been reading the murky magazines. very bad for you.”

fenger was unsmiling: “why won't you dine with me?”

“because it would be unconventional and foolish. i respect the conventions. they're so sensible. and because it would be unfair to you, and to mrs. fenger, and to me.”

“rot! it's you who have the murky magazine viewpoint, as you call it, when you imply—”

“now, look here, mr. fenger,” fanny interrupted, quietly. “let's be square with each other, even if we're not being square with ourselves. you're the real power in this plant, because you've the brains. you can make any person in this organization, or break them. that sounds melodramatic, but it's true. i've got a definite life plan, and it's as complete and detailed as an engineering blue print. i don't intend to let you spoil it. i've made a real start here. if you want to, i've no doubt you can end it. but before you do, i want to warn you that i'll make a pretty stiff fight for it. i'm no silent sufferer. i'll say things. and people usually believe me when i talk.”

still the silent, concentrated gaze. with a little impatient exclamation fanny walked toward the door. fenger, startlingly light and agile for his great height, followed.

“i'm sorry, miss brandeis, terribly sorry. you see, you interest me very much. very much.”

“thanks,” dryly.

“don't go just yet. please. i'm not a villain. really. that is, not a deliberate villain. but when i find something very fine, very intricate, very fascinating and complex—like those etchings, for example—i am intrigued. i want it near me. i want to study it.”

fanny said nothing. but she thought, “this is a dangerously clever man. too clever for you. you know so little about them.” fenger waited. most women would have found refuge in words. the wrong words. it is only the strong who can be silent when in doubt.

“perhaps you will dine with mrs. fenger and me at our home some evening? mrs. fenger will speak to you about it.”

“i'm afraid i'm usually too tired for further effort at the end of the day. i'm sorry——”

“some sunday night perhaps, then. tea.”

“thank you.” and so out, past the spare secretary, the anxious-browed stenographer, the academic office boy, to the hallway, the elevator, and finally the refuge of her own orderly desk. slosson was at lunch in one of the huge restaurants provided for employees in the building across the street. she sat there, very still, for some minutes; for more minutes than she knew. her hands were clasped tightly on the desk, and her eyes stared ahead in a puzzled, resentful, bewildered way. something inside her was saying over and over again:

“you lied to him on that very first day. that placed you. that stamped you. now he thinks you're rotten all the way through. you lied on the very first day.”

ella monahan poked her head in at the door. the gloves were on that floor, at the far end. the two women rarely saw each other, except at lunch time.

“missed you at lunch,” said ella monahan. she was a pink-cheeked, bright-eyed woman of forty-one or two, prematurely gray and therefore excessively young in her manner, as women often are who have grown gray before their time.

fanny stood up, hurriedly. “i was just about to go.”

“try the grape pie, dear. it's delicious.” and strolled off down the aisle that seemed to stretch endlessly ahead.

fanny stood for a moment looking after her, as though meaning to call her back. but she must have changed her mind, because she said, “oh, nonsense!” aloud. and went across to lunch. and ordered grape pie. and enjoyed it.