Young Bauder was being broken into the
Chicago end of the business, and he was not taking gracefully to the
process.

At the end of a long aisle, on an obscure shelf in a dim corner, Molly
Brandeis' sharp eyes espied a motley collection of dusty, grimy
china figures of the kind one sees on the mantel in the parlor of
the small-town Catholic home. Winnebago's population was two-thirds
Catholic, German and Irish, and very devout.

Mrs. Brandeis stopped short. "How much for that lot?" She pointed to the
shelf. Young Bauder's gaze followed hers, puzzled. The figures were from
five inches to a foot high, in crude, effective blues, and gold, and
crimson, and white. All the saints were there in assorted sizes, the
Pieta, the cradle in the manger. There were probably two hundred or
more of the little figures. "Oh, those!" said young Bauder vaguely. "You
don't want that stuff. Now, about that Limoges china. As I said, I can
make you a special price on it if you carry it as an open-stock pattern.
You'll find----"

"How much for that lot?" repeated Mrs. Brandeis.

"Those are left-over samples, Mrs. Brandeis. Last year's stuff. They're
all dirty. I'd forgotten they were there."

"How much for the lot?" said Mrs. Brandeis, pleasantly, for the third
time.

"I really don't know. Three hundred, I should say. But----"

"I'll give you two hundred," ventured Mrs. Brandeis, her heart in her
mouth and her mouth very firm.

"Oh, come now, Mrs. Brandeis! Bauder & Peck don't do business that way,
you know. We'd really rather not sell them at all. The things aren't
worth much to us, or to you, for that matter. But three hundred----"

"Two hundred," repeated Mrs. Brandeis, "or I cancel my order, including
the Limoges. I want those figures."

And she got them. Which isn't the point of the story. The holy figures
were fine examples of foreign workmanship, their colors, beneath
the coating of dust, as brilliant and fadeless as those found in the
churches of Europe. They reached Winnebago duly, packed in straw and
paper, still dusty and shelf-worn. Mrs. Brandeis and Sadie and Pearl sat
on up-ended boxes at the rear of the store, in the big barn-like room in
which newly arrived goods were unpacked. As Aloysius dived deep into the
crate and brought up figure after figure, the three women plunged them
into warm and soapy water and proceeded to bathe and scour the entire
school of saints, angels, and cherubim. They came out brilliantly fresh