f the straight, firm
figure and the bright, alert eye, and the buoyant humor, seemed to lose
some of those electric qualities. It was an almost imperceptible letting
down. You have seen a fine race horse suddenly break and lose his stride
in the midst of the field, and pull up and try to gain it again, and go
bravely on, his stride and form still there, but his spirit broken? That
was Molly Brandeis.

Fanny did much of the buying now. She bought quickly and shrewdly, like
her mother. She even went to the Haley House to buy, when necessary, and
Winnebagoans, passing the hotel, would see her slim, erect figure in one
of the sample-rooms with its white-covered tables laden with china,
or glassware, or Christmas goods, or whatever that particular salesman
happened to carry. They lifted their eye-brows at first, but, somehow,
it was impossible to associate this girl with the blithe, shirt-sleeved,
cigar-smoking traveling men who followed her about the sample-room,
order book in hand.

As time went on she introduced some new features into the business,
and did away with various old ones. The overflowing benches outside the
store were curbed, and finally disappeared altogether. Fanny took charge
of the window displays, and often came back to the store at night to
spend the evening at work with Aloysius. They would tack a piece
of muslin around the window to keep off the gaze of passers-by, and
together evolve a window that more than made up for the absent show
benches.

This, I suppose, is no time to stop for a description of Fanny Brandeis.
And yet the impulse to do so is irresistible. Personally, I like to
know about the hair, and eyes, and mouth of the person whose life I am
following. How did she look when she said that? What sort of expression
did she wear when this happened? Perhaps the thing that Fanny Brandeis
said about herself one day, when she was having one of her talks with
Emma McChesney, who was on her fall trip for the Featherbloom Petticoat
Company, might help.

"No ballroom would ever be hushed into admiring awe when I entered," she
said. "No waiter would ever drop his tray, dazzled, and no diners in a
restaurant would stop to gaze at me, their forks poised halfway, their
eyes blinded by my beauty. I could tramp up and down between the tables
for hours, and no one would know I was there. I'm one of a million women
who look their best in a tailor suit and a hat with a line. Not that I
ever had either. But