nd around the corner,
even while he found himself saying, politely, "Why, thanks! It's good to
BE back." And, "Yes, things have changed. All but the temple, and Rabbi
Thalmann."

Fanny left Winnebago at eight next morning.

CHAPTER NINE

"Mr. Fenger will see you now." Mr. Fenger, general manager, had been
a long time about it. This heel-cooling experience was new to Fanny
Brandeis. It had always been her privilege to keep others waiting.
Still, she felt no resentment as she sat in Michael Fenger's outer
office. For as she sat there, waiting, she was getting a distinct
impression of this unseen man whose voice she could just hear as he
talked over the telephone in his inner office. It was characteristic of
Michael Fenger that his personality reached out and touched you before
you came into actual contact with the man. Fanny had heard of him long
before she came to Haynes-Cooper. He was the genie of that glittering
lamp. All through the gigantic plant (she had already met department
heads, buyers, merchandise managers) one heard his name, and felt the
impress of his mind:

"You'll have to see Mr. Fenger about that."

"Yes,"--pointing to a new conveyor, perhaps,--"that has just been
installed. It's a great help to us. Doubles our shipping-room
efficiency. We used to use baskets, pulled by a rope. It's Mr. Fenger's
idea."

Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Fenger had made it a slogan in the
Haynes-Cooper plant long before the German nation forced it into our
everyday vocabulary. Michael Fenger was System. He could take a muddle
of orders, a jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent
workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective unit.
Untangling snarls was his pastime. Esprit de corps was his shibboleth.
Order and management his idols. And his war-cry was "Results!"

It was eleven o'clock when Fanny came into his outer office. The very
atmosphere was vibrant with his personality. There hung about the place
an air of repressed expectancy. The room was electrically charged with
the high-voltage of the man in the inner office. His secretary was a
spare, middle-aged, anxious-looking woman in snuff-brown and spectacles;
his stenographer a blond young man, also spectacled and anxious; his
office boy a stern youth in knickers, who bore no relation to the
slangy, gum-chewing, redheaded office boy of the comic sections.

The low-pitched, high-powered voice went on inside, talking over the
long-