randeis and Fanny had nibbled fudge all evening (it had turned out deliciously velvety) and had gone to bed at their usual time. At half past ten Mrs. Brandeis had wakened with the instinc

very angry, and a little terrified at the significance of his act. She went back to bed again, and she felt the blood poun

hour passed. Some one turned the corner, whistling blithely. But, no, he would not be whistling, she told herself. He would sneak in, quietly. It was a little after twelve when she heard the front door open (Winnebago rarely locked its doors). She was surprised to feel her heart beat

uietly, just as he was t

eh

e. And turn

room, with her covers about her, was conscious of a little sick feeling, not at what he had done, but t

uer

se. "

hy

. I didn't mean to stay. And then Bauer introduced me a

u playe

n't have my

day. And no pocket mone

breath. At breakfast next morning Fanny plied him with q

Theodore? Did he pl

hought it was too easy, or something, but I thought he

ew York three times a week for his lessons. Mrs. Brandeis took him as far as Chicago, treated him to an extravagant dinner, put him on the train and with difficulty stifled the impulse to tell all the other passengers in the car to look after

l of which only a woman could be capable. They saved in ways that only a woman's mind could devise; petty ways, that included cream and ice, and clothes, and candy. It was rather fun at first. When that wore off it had become a habit. Mrs. Brandeis made

I could help you a lot on Saturdays an

about buying and selling. I don't want you to know a bill of lading from a sales slip when you see it. I don't want you to know whethe

s selling you those go-carts I heard him say. `F. o. b. Bu

was ignorant of so many things that the average girl of eighteen did know, that Winnebago was almost justified in thinking her queer. She had had a joyous time at school, in spite of algebra and geometry and physics. She took the part of the heroine in the senior class play given at the Wi

of gives a peck two inches from my nose, and then gig

hool sleighing parties and hay rides the boy next her slipped a wooden and uncertain arm about her waist while they all were singing "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells," and "Good Night Ladies," and "Merrily W

e chose as the object of her affections a bullet-headed boy named Simpson. One morning, as the last bell rang and they were taking their seats, Fanny passed his desk and gave his coarse and stubbly hair a tweak. It was really a love tweak, and intended to be playful, but she prob

courage to do it. They were graduated from the grammar school together, and Clarence solemnly read a graduation essay entitled "Where is the Horse?" Automobiles were just beginning to flash plentifully up and down Elm Street. Clarence had always been what Winnebago termed sickly, in spite of his mo

e fact that he had nothing to say. In her last year at high school she found herself singled out for the attentions of Harmon Kent, who was the Beau Nash of the Winnebago high school. His clothes were made by Schwartze, the tailor, when all the other boys

s all knew he was a bluff, but his engaging manner carried him through. When he went away to the state university he made Fanny solemnly promise to write; to come down to Madison for the football games; to be sure to remember about the Junior prom. He wrote once-a badly spelled scrawl-and she

was patronizing her much as the scion of an aristocratic line banters the housemaid whom he meets on the stairs. She bit an imaginary apron corner, and bobbed a curtsy right there on Elm Street, in front of the Courier offi

f Paper." On Winnebago's Fox River were located a number of the largest and most important paper mills in the country. There were mills in which paper was made of wood fiber, and others in which paper was made of rags. You could

lace of hand labor. The rag-rooms alone still employed hundreds of girls who picked, sorted, dusted over the great suction bins. The rooms in which they worked were gray with dust. They wore caps over their hair to protect it from the motes that you could see spinning and swirling in the water

rocess until it was fed into a great crushing roller that pressed the moisture out of it, flattened it to the proper thinness and spewed it out at last, miraculously, in the form of rolls of crisp, white paper. On the first day of the Easter vacation Fanny Brandeis walked

o it?" demande

, to get

ou could have visited

the fingers of her right as was her way when s

rite about the paper b

n, what do

ted them. And the room in which they do it. And the bins. And the machinery. Oh, it's the most fascinating, and-and sort of relentless machinery. And the acid burns on the hands of the men at the vats. And their shoes. And then the paper, so white. And the way we tear it up, or cru

onfronting a new and hitherto unsuspected vista, formed by a peculiar arrangement of clouds, perhaps, or light, or foliage, or all

I make it rea

y Brandeis. "That's ju

m walked, some of them from the very edge of town. Mrs. Brandeis said that she was carrying things too far, but Fanny stuck it out for the two weeks, at the end of which period she spent an entire Sunday in a hair-washing, face-steaming, and manicuring bee. S

d cleared his throat. He was not an eloquent man.

it at t

of the e

ked there, in

ned hastily into a cough. "I thought that perhaps the editor of

in an hour or two, when Lem Davis should have read it. Lem Davis did read it, and snorted, and s

rs. Brandeis's daughter-of the Bazaar? Let me tell you I'd go over there and tell her what I think of the way she's bringing up that girl-if she wasn't an advertiser. `A Piece of Paper'! Hell!" And

d the door. At supper that night he told Mrs. Henning about it. Mrs. Henning was a practical woman, as the wife of a small-town high school principal must needs b

new those things, dear, I suppose we wouldn't be eating sausage for supper to-night." There was a little silen

pot roast. After she had iced a cake she enhanced it with cunning arabesques of jelly. The house shone as it never had, even under Mattie's honest regime. But it was like hitching a high-power engine to a butter churn. There were periods of maddening restlessness.

he dust-pan, and an old bushel basket. She swept up chips, scraped up ashes, scoured the preserve shelves, washed the windows, cleaned the vegetable bi

, and the sauce in the glass bowl, and the cookies on a blue plate, and the potatoes doing very, very slowly, and the kettle steaming with a Peerybingle cheerfulness, Fanny would stroll out to the front porch again to watch for the familiar figure to appear around the corner of Norris Street. She would wear her blue-and-white checked gingham apron deftly twisted over one hip, and tucked in, in deference to the passers-by. And the town would go by-Hen Cody's drays, rattling and thundering; the high school boys thudding down the road, dog-tired and sweaty in their football suits, or their track pants and jersies, on their way

it had long been considered hopeless. After that Fanny took her place. She developed a surprising knack at selling. Yet it was not so surprising, perhaps, when one considered her teacher. She learned as only a woman can learn who is brought into daily contact with the outside world. It was not only contact: it was the relation of buyer and seller

d a half, while the golf club crowd selected for a gift or prize one of the little white plates with the faded-looking blue sprig pattern, costing thirty-nine cents. One day, after she ha

from the imported Limoges bowls to the Sevres cups and saucers, and all she b

oke from the dep

er spends more than twenty-five cents, anyway. But I want to tell you now that it isn't only a matter of plates. It's a matter of understanding folks. When you've learned whom to show the expensive hand-p

glowing base burner and talk to Mrs. Brandeis. It was incredible, the secrets they revealed of business, and love and disgrace; of hopes and aspirations, and troubles, and happiness. The farmer women u

by bit, the sordid, tragic details of their starved existence. Fanny was often shocked when they told their age-twenty-five, twenty-eight, thirty, but old and withered from drudgery, and child-bearing, and coarse, unwholesome food. Ignorant women, and terribly

ous drudgery of housework. Everything went to make his work easier-new harrows, plows, tractors, wind mills, reapers, barns, silos. The story would come out, bit by bit, as the woma

was more likely to buy the six-dollar doll, with the blue satin dress, and the real hair and eye-lashes, w

thy. She was so square with them. When Minnie Mahler, out Centerville way, got married

chamber set," Minnie's aunt

innie Mahler,

gets marri

nk she's got a parlor lamp. At least I haven't sold one. Why don't you get her that? I

nt would end by

earned to suggest without seeming to suggest. She learned to do surprisingly well all those things that her mother did so surprisingly well-surprisingly because both the women secretly hated the business of buying and selling. Once, on the Four

between her teeth. "T

. Pearl's at dinner. And

I won't have you selling fireworks like that-o

s argued. Fanny often found her mother looking at her these days with a questioning sadness in her eyes. Once she suggested that Fanny join the class in drawing at the Winnebago university-a small fresh-water college. Fanny did try it for a fe

h alive. Her name was Mrs. Emma McChesney, and between her and Mrs. Brandeis there existed a warm friendship. She always took dinner with Mrs.

he used to say,

ow what it means. You haven't been eating vermi

a dessert, t

've got for dessert. I couldn't stand it. But, oh,

ore than l

ever was shiny in the back. Her collar, or jabot, or tie, or cuffs, or whatever relieving bit of white she wore, was always of the freshest and crispest. Her hats were apt to be small and full of what is known as "line." S

ers. You know how to sell goods and handle people. And you know values. That's all there is to the whole game of business. I don't advise you to go on the road. Heaven knows I wouldn't advise my dearest enemy to do that, muc

housand times? But I'm-I'm afraid. There's too much at stake. Suppose I couldn't succeed? There's Theodore. His whole future is depen

thinking that Fanny has the making of a

r face sparkled into sudden life, as alw

ing jump for it and land! I'd take a chance. What is there for her in this town?

ing, and the love of my two children

t you? You're the smartest woman in

le, in thought. "What do you

Fanny has. I'm so dog-tired at the end of the day.

Fan

ee to pick my book

mean by that, child? It

d in Winnebago, Wisconsin. I'm a working woman, and a Jew, and we haven't any money or social position. And unless she's a Becky Sharp any small town girl wit

ok that said, "You see?" And from Emma McChesney to Moll

ny, don't you s

tiative leave to go to Milwaukee, or Chicago, or New Yo

ing look that made it almost lovely. She crossed swiftly over to where her mother sat, and put a hand on either cheek (grown thinner of late) and kissed the

ut

goest I will go.' And she went. And when they got to Bethlehem, Ruth looked around, knowingly, until she saw Boaz, the catch of the town. So she went to work in his fields, gleaning, and she gleaned away, trying to look

eis, aren't

he dashing widow. After that it was all off with the Bethlehem girls. Boaz paid no more attention to them than

isten to me, child. The very next time a traveling man in a brown suit and a red necktie asks you to take dinner with him at

brown derby?" "Even if he shows you the letters from his girl in Manistee,"