ere was nothing spectacular about the welcome she got on her return
to the office after this first trip. A firm that counts its employees by
the thousands, and its profits in tens of millions, cannot be expected
to draw up formal resolutions of thanks when a heretofore flabby
department begins to show signs of red blood.

Ella Monahan said, "They'll make light of it--all but Fenger. That's
their way."

Slosson drummed with his fingers all the time she was giving him the
result of her work in terms of style, material, quantity, time, and
price. When she had finished he said, "Well, all I can say is we seem
to be going out of the mail order business and into the imported novelty
line, de luxe. I suppose by next Christmas the grocery department will
be putting in artichoke hearts, and truffles and French champagne by the
keg for community orders."

To which Fanny had returned, sweetly, "If Oregon and Wyoming show any
desire for artichokes and champagne I don't see why we shouldn't."

Fenger, strangely enough, said little. He was apt to be rather curt
these days, and almost irritable. Fanny attributed it to the reaction
following the strain of the Christmas rush.

One did not approach Fenger's office except by appointment. Fanny sent
word to him of her return. For two days she heard nothing from him. Then
the voice of the snuff-brown secretary summoned her. She did not have
to wait this time, but passed directly through the big bright outer room
into the smaller room. The Power House, Fanny called it.

Fenger was facing the door. "Missed you," he said.

"You must have," Fanny laughed, "with only nine thousand nine hundred
and ninety-nine to look after."

"You look as if you'd been on a vacation, instead of a test trip."

"So I have. Why didn't you warn me that business, as transacted in New
York, is a series of social rites? I didn't have enough white kid gloves
to go round. No one will talk business in an office. I don't see what
they use offices for, except as places in which to receive their mail.
You utter the word `Business,' and the other person immediately says,
`Lunch.' No wholesaler seems able to quote you his prices until he
has been sustained by half a dozen Cape Cods. I don't want to see a
restaurant or a rose silk shade for weeks."

Fenger tapped the little pile of papers on his desk. "I've read your
reports. If you can do that on lunches, I'd like to see what you could
put over in a series of dinner