I have my points, only they're blunted just now."

Still, that bit of description doesn't do, after all. Because she had
distinct charm, and some beauty. She was not what is known as the Jewish
type, in spite of her coloring. The hair that used to curl, waved
now. In a day when coiffures were a bird's-nest of puffs and curls and
pompadour, she wore her hair straight back from her forehead and wound
in a coil at the neck. Her face in repose was apt to be rather lifeless,
and almost heavy. But when she talked, it flashed into sudden life, and
you found yourself watching her mouth, fascinated. It was the key to
her whole character, that mouth. Mobile, humorous, sensitive, the
sensuousness of the lower lip corrected by the firmness of the upper.
She had large, square teeth, very regular, and of the yellow-white tone
that bespeaks health. She used to make many of her own clothes, and she
always trimmed her hats. Mrs. Brandeis used to bring home material and
styles from her Chicago buying trips, and Fanny's quick mind adapted
them. She managed, somehow, to look miraculously well dressed.

The Christmas following Theodore's marriage was the most successful
one in the history of Brandeis' Bazaar. And it bred in Fanny Brandeis a
lifelong hatred of the holiday season. In years after she always tried
to get away from the city at Christmas time. The two women did the work
of four men. They had a big stock on hand. Mrs. Brandeis was everywhere
at once. She got an enormous amount of work out of her clerks, and they
did not resent it. It is a gift that all born leaders have. She herself
never sat down, and the clerks unconsciously followed her example. She
never complained of weariness, she never lost her temper, she never lost
patience with a customer, even the tight-fisted farmer type who doled
their money out with that reluctance found only in those who have wrung
it from the soil.

In the midst of the rush she managed, somehow, never to fail to grasp
the humor of a situation. A farmer woman came in for a doll's head,
which she chose with incredible deliberation and pains. As it was being
wrapped she explained that it was for her little girl, Minnie. She had
promised the head this year. Next Christmas they would buy a body for
it. Molly Brandeis's quick sympathy went out to the little girl who was
to lavish her mother-love on a doll's head for a whole year. She saw the
head, in ghastly decapitation, staring stiffly out from the c