ave
given everything she had, everything she hoped to be, to be able to
take back that monosyllable. She was gripped with horror at what she had
done. She had spoken almost mechanically. And yet that monosyllable must
have been the fruit of all these months of inward struggle and thought.
"Now I begin to understand you," Fenger went on. "You've decided to
lop off all the excrescences, eh? Well, I can't say that I blame you. A
woman in business is handicapped enough by the very fact of her sex." He
stared at her again. "Too bad you're so pretty."

"I'm not!" said Fanny hotly, like a school-girl.

"That's a thing that can't be argued, child. Beauty's subjective, you
know."

"I don't see what difference it makes, anyway."

"Oh, yes, you do." He stopped. "Or perhaps you don't, after all. I
forget how young you are. Well, now, Miss Brandeis, you and your woman's
mind, and your masculine business experience and sense are to be turned
loose on our infants' wear department. The buyer, Mr. Slosson, is going
to resent you. Naturally. I don't know whether we'll get results from
you in a month, or six months or a year. Or ever. But something tells me
we're going to get them. You've lived in a small town most of your life.
And we want that small-town viewpoint. D'you think you've got it?"

Fanny was on her own ground here. "If knowing the Wisconsin small-town
woman, and the Wisconsin farmer woman--and man too, for that
matter--means knowing the Oregon, and Wyoming, and Pennsylvania, and
Iowa people of the same class, then I've got it."

"Good!" Michael Fenger stood up. "I'm not going to load you down with
instructions, or advice. I think I'll let you grope your own way around,
and bump your head a few times. Then you'll learn where the low places
are. And, Miss Brandeis, remember that suggestions are welcome in this
plant. We take suggestions all the way from the elevator starter to the
president." His tone was kindly, but not hopeful.

Fanny was standing too, her mental eye on the door. But now she turned
to face him squarely.

"Do you mean that?"

"Absolutely."

"Well, then, I've one to make. Your stock boys and stock girls walk
miles and miles every day, on every floor of this fifteen-story
building. I watched them yesterday, filling up the bins, carrying
orders, covering those enormous distances from one bin to another, up
one aisle and down the next, to the office, back again. Your floors are
concrete, or cement, o