e to Haynes-Cooper, as assistant
to the infants' wear department buyer was just a piece of luck,
augmented by a little pulling on your part?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't. You were carefully picked by me, and I don't expect to find
I've made a mistake. I suppose you know very little about buying and
selling infants' wear?"

"Less than about almost any other article in the world--at least, in the
department store, or mail order world."

"I thought so. And it doesn't matter. I pretty well know your history,
which means that I know your training. You're young; you're ambitious,
you're experienced; you're imaginative. There's no length you can't go,
with these. It just depends on how farsighted your mental vision is.
Now listen, Miss Brandeis: I'm not going to talk to you in millions. The
guides do enough of that. But you know we do buy and sell in terms of
millions, don't you? Well, our infants' wear department isn't helping
to roll up the millions; and it ought to, because there are millions of
babies born every year, and the golden-spoon kind are in the minority.
I've decided that that department needs a woman, your kind of woman.
Now, as a rule, I never employ a woman when I can use a man. There's
only one other woman filling a really important position in the
merchandise end of this business. That's Ella Monahan, head of the glove
department, and she's a genius. She is a woman who is limited in every
other respect--just average; but she knows glove materials in a way
that's uncanny. I'd rather have a man in her place; but I don't happen
to know any men glove-geniuses. Tell me, what do you think of that
etching?"

Fanny tried--and successfully--not to show the jolt her mind had
received as she turned to look at the picture to which his finger
pointed. She got up and strolled over to it, and she was glad her suit
fitted and hung as it did in the back.

"I don't like it particularly. I like it less than any other etching you
have here." The walls were hung with them. "Of course you understand I
know nothing about them. But it's too flowery, isn't it, to be good?
Too many lines. Like a writer who spoils his effect by using too many
words."

Fenger came over and stood beside her, staring at the black and white
and gray thing in its frame. "I felt that way, too." He stared down at
her, then. "Jew?" he asked.

A breathless instant. "No," said Fanny Brandeis.

Michael Fenger smiled for the first time. Fanny Brandeis would h