y--she who could have managed its business, politics and
social activities with one hand tied behind her, and both her bright
eyes shut. In the kitchen and on the porch and in the hallway stood
certain obscure people--women whose finger tips stuck out of their
cotton gloves, and whose skirts dipped ludicrously in the back. Only
Molly Brandeis could have identified them for you. Mrs. Brosch, the
butter and egg woman, hovered in the dining-room doorway. She had
brought a pound of butter. It was her contribution to the funeral baked
meats. She had deposited it furtively on the kitchen table. Birdie
Callahan, head waitress at the Haley House, found a seat just next to
the elegant Mrs. Morehouse, who led the Golf Club crowd. A haughty young
lady in the dining-room, Birdie Callahan, in her stiffly starched white,
but beneath the icy crust of her hauteur was a molten mass of good humor
and friendliness. She and Molly Brandeis had had much in common.

But no one--not even Fanny Brandeis--ever knew who sent the great
cluster of American Beauty roses that had come all the way from
Milwaukee. There had been no card, so who could have guessed that they
came from Blanche Devine. Blanche Devine, of the white powder, and the
minks, and the diamonds, and the high-heeled shoes, and the plumes,
lived in the house with the closed shutters, near the freight depot.
She often came into Brandeis' Bazaar. Molly Brandeis had never allowed
Sadie, or Pearl, or Fanny or Aloysius to wait on her. She had attended
to her herself. And one day, for some reason, Blanche Devine found
herself telling Molly Brandeis how she had come to be Blanche Devine,
and it was a moving and terrible story. And now her cardless flowers, a
great, scarlet sheaf of them, lay next the chaste white roses that had
been sent by the Temple Emanu-el Ladies' Aid. Truly, death is a great
leveler.

In a vague way Fanny seemed to realize that all these people were
there. I think she must even have found a certain grim comfort in their
presence. Hers had not been the dry-eyed grief of the strong, such as
you read about. She had wept, night and day, hopelessly, inconsolably,
torturing herself with remorseful questions. If she had not gone
skating, might she not have seen how ill her mother was? Why hadn't
she insisted on the doctor when her mother refused to eat the Christmas
dinner? Blind and selfish, she told herself; blind and selfish. Her face
was swollen and distorted now, and s