n't business. It's sentimental
slush!"

"Sentimental, yes," agreed Fanny pleasantly, "but then, we're running
the only sentimental department in this business. And we ought to be
doing it at the rate of a million and a quarter a year. If you think
these last suggestions sentimental, I'm afraid the next one--"

"Let's have it, Miss Brandeis," Fenger encouraged her quietly.

"It's"--she flashed a mischievous smile at Slosson--"it's a mother's
guide and helper, and adviser. A woman who'll answer questions, give
advice. Some one they'll write to, with a picture in their minds of a
large, comfortable, motherly-looking person in gray. You know we get
hundreds of letters asking whether they ought to order flannel bands,
or the double-knitted kind. That sort of thing. And who's been answering
them? Some sixteen-year-old girl in the mailing department who doesn't
know a flannel band from a bootee when she sees it. We could call our
woman something pleasant and everydayish, like Emily Brand. Easy to
remember. And until we can find her, I'll answer those letters myself.
They're important to us as well as to the woman who writes them. And
now, there's the matter of obstetrical outfits. Three grades, packed
ready for shipment, practical, simple, and complete. Our drug section
has the separate articles, but we ought to--"

"Oh, lord!" groaned Slosson, and slumped disgustedly in his seat.

But Fenger got up, came over to Fanny, and put a hand on her shoulder
for a moment. He looked down at her. "I knew you'd do it." He smiled
queerly. "Tell me, where did you learn all this?"

"I don't know," faltered Fanny happily. "Brandeis' Bazaar, perhaps. It's
just another case of plush photograph album."

"Plush--?"

Fanny told him that story. Even the discomfited Slosson grinned at it.

But after ten minutes more of general discussion Slosson left. Fenger,
without putting it in words, had conveyed that to him. Fanny stayed.
They did things that way at Haynes-Cooper. No waste. No delay. That she
had accomplished in two months that which ordinarily takes years was not
surprising. They did things that way, too, at Haynes-Cooper. Take the
case of Nathan Haynes himself. And Michael Fenger too who, not so many
years before, had been a machine-boy in a Racine woolen mill.

For my part, I confess that Fanny Brandeis begins to lose interest
for me. Big Business seems to dwarf the finer things in her. That
red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl,