into wild panic by rising for it--a thing that no woman is allowed to
do in an orthodox Jewish church. She stood, calmly, though the beshawled
women to right and left of her yanked at her coat.

In January Fanny discovered New York. She went as selector for her
department. Hereafter Slosson would do only the actual buying. Styles,
prices, and materials would be decided by her. Ella Monahan accompanied
her, it being the time for her monthly trip. Fanny openly envied her her
knowledge of New York's wholesale district. Ella offered to help her.

"No," Fanny had replied, "I think not, thanks. You've your own work. And
besides I know pretty well what I want, and where to go to get it. It's
making them give it to me that will be hard."

They went to the same hotel, and took connecting rooms. Each went her
own way, not seeing the other from morning until night, but they often
found kimonoed comfort in each other's presence.

Fanny had spent weeks outlining her plan of attack. She had determined
to retain the cheap grades, but to add a finer line as well. She
recalled those lace-bedecked bundles that the farmer women and mill
hands had born so tenderly in their arms. Here was one direction in
which they allowed extravagance free rein. As a canny business woman,
she would trade on her knowledge of their weakness.

At Haynes-Cooper order is never a thing to be despised by a wholesaler.
Fanny, knowing this, had made up her mind to go straight to Horn &
Udell. Now, Horn & Udell are responsible for the bloomers your small
daughter wears under her play frock, in place of the troublesome and
extravagant petticoat of the old days. It was they who introduced
smocked pinafores to you; and those modish patent-leather belts for
children at which your grandmothers would have raised horrified hands.
They taught you that an inch of hand embroidery is worth a yard of cheap
lace. And as for style, cut, line--you can tell a Horn & Udell child
from among a flock of thirty.

Fanny, entering their office, felt much as Molly Brandeis had felt that
January many, many years before, when she had made that first terrifying
trip to the Chicago market. The engagement had been made days before.
Fanny never knew the shock that her youthfully expectant face gave old
Sid Udell. He turned from his desk to greet her, his polite smile of
greeting giving way to a look of bewilderment.

"But you are not the buyer, are you, Miss Brandeis?"

"No, Mr. Slosson