en the
Brandeis family came to Winnebago five years before, these people had
waited, cautiously, and investigated, and then had called. They were
of a type to be found in every small town; prosperous, conservative,
constructive citizens, clannish, but not so much so as their city
cousins, mingling socially with their Gentile neighbors, living well,
spending their money freely, taking a vast pride in the education of
their children. But here was Molly Brandeis, a Jewess, setting out
to earn her living in business, like a man. It was a thing to stir
Congregation Emanu-el to its depths. Jewish women, they would tell you,
did not work thus. Their husbands worked for them, or their sons, or
their brothers.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Brandeis, when she heard of it. "I seem
to remember a Jewess named Ruth who was left widowed, and who gleaned in
the fields for her living, and yet the neighbors didn't talk. For that
matter, she seems to be pretty well thought of, to this day."

But there is no denying that she lost caste among her own people. Custom
and training are difficult to overcome. But Molly Brandeis was too
deep in her own affairs to care. That Christmas season following her
husband's death was a ghastly time, and yet a grimly wonderful one, for
it applied the acid test to Molly Brandeis and showed her up pure gold.

The first week in January she, with Sadie and Pearl, the two clerks,
and Aloysius, the boy, took inventory. It was a terrifying thing,
that process of casting up accounts. It showed with such starkness how
hideously the Brandeis ledger sagged on the wrong side. The three women
and the boy worked with a sort of dogged cheerfulness at it, counting,
marking, dusting, washing. They found shelves full of forgotten stock,
dust-covered and profitless. They found many articles of what is known
as hard stock, akin to the plush album; glass and plated condiment
casters for the dining table, in a day when individual salts and
separate vinegar cruets were already the thing; lamps with straight
wicks when round wicks were in demand.

They scoured shelves, removed the grime of years from boxes, washed
whole battalions of chamber sets, bathed piles of plates, and bins of
cups and saucers. It was a dirty, back-breaking job, that ruined the
finger nails, tried the disposition, and caked the throat with
dust. Besides, the store was stove-heated and, near the front door,
uncomfortably cold. The women wore little shoul