e general store were numbered, and she set about making hers a novelty store. There was something terrible about the earnestness with which she stuck to business. She was not more than thirty-eight

ed on a stool near the stove, and show her the picture of their girl in the back of their watch, and asked her to dinner at the Haley House. She listened to their tale of woe, and

y the Winnebago young men-their straw sailors were likely to be saw-edged when the local edges were smooth, and their coats were more flaring, or their trousers wider than the coats and trousers of the Winnebago boys-they were not, for the most part, the gay dogs that Winnebago's fancy painted them. Many of them were very lonely married men who missed their wiv

much chance to sell you a gold brick as to sell old John D. Rockefeller a gallon of oil." Mrs. Brandeis eyed his samples coldly. "But it looks so unattractive. And t

ater-lily pattern table covers. Use No. 100 braid and the smallest butto

cate, with its tracery of curling petals and feathery fern sprays. Winnebago gazed and was bitten by the Battenberg bug. It wound itself up in a network of Battenberg braid, in all the numbers. It bought buttons o

tion. There was something about her brown eyes and her straight, sensible nose that reassured them so that few suspected the mischievous in her. For she

niggardly basis, however, and she short-rationed her two maids outrageously. It was said that she could serve less real food on more real lace doilies than any other housekeeper in Winnebago. Now, Mrs. Brandeis sold Scourine two cents cheaper than the grocery stores, using it as an advertisement to attract housewives, and making no profit on the article itself

Manville Smith, a dang

pake Mrs. G.

w m

doz

hing

Send

pencil poised. "We cannot send Scourine unless with a

ed and soared agitatedly. "But my go

have to carry

not! I'll s

es at five." I

a thing! You can't ex

irl at the old Haley House before she married George

so heavy," Molly Br

uld not. You're used to that sort

lamps, knew what was coming, f

sweetly. "That's why I thought you might not mind taking

ille Smith. And took her plumes and her p

ly Brandeis ever could be. A

e hated it, but it made her wise, and tolerant, and, in the end, famous. I don't know what more one could ask of any institution. It brought her in contact with men and women, taught her how to deal with them. After school she used often to run down to the store to see her mother, while Theodore went

ew Year, and the lesser Jewish holidays. Also, she went to temple on Friday night and Saturday morning, when the other girls she knew went to church on Sunday. These things set her apart in the little Middle Western town; but it was not these that constituted the real difference. She played, and

t bridge, near the Catholic church and monastery, was the favorite for play. It lay, a lovely, gracious thing, below the hot little town, all green, and lush, and cool, a tiny stream dimpling through it. The plump Capuchin Fathers, in their coarse brown robes, knotted about the waist with a cord,

and conquered people. She saw them wild, free, sovereign, and there were no greasy, berry-peddling Oneidas among them. They were Sioux, and Pottawatomies (that last had the real Indian sound), and Winnebagos, and Menomonees, and Outagamis. She made them taciturn, and beady-eyed, and lithe, and fleet, and every other adjectival thing her imagination and history book could supply. The fat and placid Capuchin Fathers on the hill became Jesuits, sinister, silent, powerful, with France and the Church of Rome behind them. From the shelter of that big oak would step Nicolet, the brave, first

! You're it!

a moment, blinking stupidly. The next moment she was running as fleetly as th

staggering and feeling its way about as does that of any little girl whose mind is exceptionally active, and whose mother is unusually busy. It was on the D

ild for twenty-four hours. So it was in the face of disapproval that Fanny, making deep inroads into the steak and fried sweet potatoes at supper on the eve of the Day of Atonement, announced her int

rotested. "I guess you're not the

to an already buttery morsel, and che

is is the last bite I'll h

xclaimed Mrs. Br

s!" hooted

cientiously eating

going to fast all day. We

n't," Theo

ut that isn't the object in fasting, Fanny-just to see if you can. I

anny passionately. "Theo

I'm going to play a violin solo during the memoria

throbbing rise and fall of this fifteen-year-old boy's violin playing, realized, vaguely, that here w

ade up her mind that she would not let this next day, with its poignantly beautiful service, move her too deeply. It was the first since

y in electricity. A little man, Rabbi Thalmann, with hands and feet as small and delicate as those of a woman. Fanny found him fascinating to look on, in his rabbinical black broadcloth and his two pairs of glasses perched, in reading, upon his small hooked nose. He stood very straight in the

es soft and luminous. The bare, yellow-varnished wooden pews glowed with the reflection from the chandeliers. The seven-branched candlesticks on either side of the pulpit were entwined with smilax. The red plush curtain that hung in front of the Ark on ordinary days, and the red plush pulpit cover too, were replaced by gleaming white satin edged with gold fringe and finished at the corners with heavy gold tas

he barrel in the cellar. Two hours later she would attack a supper of fried potatoes, and liver, and tea, and peach preserve, and more stacks of bread and butter. Then there were the cherry trees in the back yard, and the berry bushes, not to speak of sundry bags of small, hard candies of the jelly-bean variety, fitted for quick and secret munching during school. She liked good things to eat, this sturdy little girl

drifts of crackling autumn leaves. Theodore went to the cellar and got an apple, which he ate with what Fanny considered an unnecessary amount of scrunching. It

y slept late. This morning Fanny's black hair was spread over the pillow as she lay on her back, one arm outflung, the other at her breast. She made a rather startlingly black and white and scarlet picture as she lay there asleep. Fanny did things very much in that way, too, with broad, vivid, unmistakable splashes of color

ed the senses. It carried with it visions of hot, brown breakfast rolls, and eggs, and butter. Fanny loved her breakfast. She turned over now, and decided to go to sleep again. Bu

t only that, he had just begun his breakfast. An egg, all golden, and white, and crisply brown at the frilly edges, lay on his plate. Theodore always ate his egg in a mathematical sort of way. He swallowed the white hastily first, because he disliked it, and Mrs. Brandeis insisted that he eat it. Then he would bro

ch and breathed deeply and windily of the heady September Wisconsin morning air. As she stood there, with her stiff, short black curls still damp and glistening, in her best shoes

le at ten, Theodore with his beloved violin tucked careful

" she ask

hink I'd eat old breakfast when I said I was going to

" st

register. The seating arrangement of the temple was the Almanach de Gotha of Congregation Emanu-el. Old Ben Reitman, patriarch among the Jewish settlers of Winnebago, who had come over an immigrant youth, and who now owned hundreds of rich farm acres, besides houses, mills and bank

on, back to the Brandeis pew, third from the last, behind which sat only a few obscure families branded as Russians,

on the window of the pine tree that stood close to the temple, and was vastly amused at the jaundiced look that the square of yellow window glass cast upon the face of the vain and overdressed Mrs. Nathan Pereles. From time to t

seat when the afternoon service was begun. Some of the more devout members had remained to pray all through the midday. The congregation came straggling in by twos and threes. Many of the women had exchanged the severely corseted discomfort

hours. At quarter to three Bella slipped out through the side aisle, beckonin

d for you. Come back before the memorial service begi

ce of freshly-baked pastry. Bella, a rather baleful look in her eyes, led the way to the butler's pantry that was as large as the average kitchen. And there, ranged on platters, and baking boards, and on snowy-white napkins, was that which made Tantalus's feast seem a dry and barren snack. The Weinberg's had baked. It is the custom in the household of Atonement Day fasters of the old school to begin the evenin

anny in a sort of

said Bella, t

There were others whose centers were apricot, pure molten gold in the sunlight. There were speckled expanses of cheese kuchen, the golden-brown surface showing rich cracks through which one caught glimpses of the lemon-yellow cheese beneath-cottage cheese that had been beaten up with eggs, and spices, and sugar, and lemon. Flaky crust rose,

hat her white little teeth met in the very middle of the oozing red-brown juice and one heard a little squirt

he swallowed the last morsel of the plum tart, and selected another-apricot, this time, and opened her moist red lips. But just before she bit into it (the Inquisition could have

nd perhaps more glittering ones, in her lifetime, but to her dying day she never forgot that first battle between the flesh and the spirit, there in the sugar-scented pantry-and the spirit won. As Bella's lips closed upon the second bite of apricot

e it startlingly sweet and clear and resonant. Fanny slid very quietly into the seat beside Mrs. Brandeis, and slipped her moist and cold little hand into her mother's warm, work-roughened palm. The mother's brown eyes, very bright with unshed tears, left their perusal of the pray

its cramped position. Bella, the guilty, came stealing in, a pink-and-gold pictur

eemed to sense w

did you?" she w

hook he

om the little wooden box and the stick with its taut lines of catgut. Whatever it was-the length of the thin, sensitive fingers, the turn of the wrist, the articulation of the forearm, the something in the brain, or all these combined-Theodore Brandeis possessed that which makes for greatness. You realized that as he crouched over his violin to get his cello tones. As he played to-day the little congregation sat very still, and each was thinking of his ambitions and his failures

ired eyes, like one returning from a far mental journey; then rose, and came forward to the pulpit. He began, in Hebrew, the

us the capacity for si

with his slower eyes, always came out five words behind the rest who tumbled upon the responses and scurried briskly through them, so that his fine old voice, somewhat hoarse and quavering now, rolled out its "Amen!" in solitary ma

anny rose with her mother and Theodore, who had left the choir loft to join them. The little wheezy organ played very softly. The black-robed figures swayed. Here and there a half-stifled sob rose, and was crushed. Fanny felt a hot haze that blurred her vision. She winked it away,

sting, was far removed from his everyday thoughts of his horses, his lumber mills, his farms, his mortgages. Even Mrs. Nathan Pereles, in her black satin and bugles and jets, her cold, hard face usually unlighted by sympathy or love, seemed to feel something of this emotional wave. Fanny Brandeis was shaken by it. Her head ached (that was hunger) and her hands were icy.

egation swept to its feet with a mighty surge. Fanny rose with them, her face very white in its frame of black curls, her eyes luminou

keep thee. May God cause His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious

ought of Bella. She felt, vaguely, that she and this school friend were formed of different stuff. She knew that the bond between them had been the grubby, phy

t a hand on her d

d, Fa

lit

hungry!" f

but I'm

Noodle soup.

en made five, guessed something of what had happened. She had felt a great surge of pride, had Molly Brandeis, when her son had swayed the congregation with the magic of his music. She ha

all right,

eplied Fann

y and clean to know that you were able

hmp

e girl, "only, life seems to take such special delight in offering temptation to those who are able

d of it, to learn what it was her mother hoped. And she had felt a sudden, scalding drop on her hand whe