d even Sadie, accustomed though she was to
conquest.

"Come, come, Schabelitz!" said Bauer again. "I must get along."

"Then go, my friend. Go along and make your preparations for that studio
supper. The only interesting woman in Winnebago--" he bowed to Mrs.
Brandeis--"will not be there. I know them, these small-town society
women, with their imitation city ways. And bony! Always! I am enjoying
myself. I shall stay here."

And he did stay. Sadie, talking it over afterward with Pearl and
Aloysius, put it thus:

"They say he's the grandest violin player in the world. Not that I care
much for the violin, myself. Kind of squeaky, I always think. But it
just goes to show they're all alike. Ain't it the truth? I jollied him
just like I did Sam Bloom, of Ganz & Pick, Novelties, an hour before. He
laughed just where Sam did. And they both handed me a line of talk about
my hair and eyes, only Sam said I was a doll, and this Schabelitz, or
whatever his name is, said I was as alluring as a Lorelei. I guess he
thought he had me there, but I didn't go through the seventh reader for
nothing. `If you think I'm flattered,' I said to him, `you're mistaken.
She was the mess who used to sit out on a rock with her back hair down,
combing away and singing like mad, and keeping an eye out for sailors up
and down the river. If I had to work that hard to get some attention,'
I said, `I'd give up the struggle, and settle down with a cat and a
teakettle.' At that he just threw back his head and roared. And when
Mrs. Brandeis came up he said something about the wit of these American
women. `Work is a great sharpener of wit--and wits,' Mrs. Brandeis said
to him. `Pearl, did Aloysius send Eddie out with that boiler, special?'
And she didn't pay any more attention to him, or make any more fuss
over him, than she would to a traveler with a line of samples she wasn't
interested in. I guess that's why he had such a good time."

Sadie was right. That was the reason. Fanny, coming into the store half
an hour later, saw this man who had swayed thousands with his music,
down on his hands and knees in the toy section at the rear of Brandeis'
Bazaar. He and Sadie and Aloysius were winding up toy bears, and clowns,
and engines, and carriages, and sending them madly racing across the
floor. Sometimes their careening career was threatened with disaster
in the form of a clump of brooms or a stack of galvanized pails. But
Schabelitz would scramble forward w