p,
wondered, a little bitterly, if Christmas would ever mean anything to
her but pressure, weariness, work. She told herself that she would not
think of that Christmas of one year ago. One year! As she glanced around
the orderly little office, and out to the stock room beyond, then back
to her desk again, she had an odd little feeling of unreality. Surely it
had been not one year, but many years--a lifetime--since she had elbowed
her way up and down those packed aisles of the busy little store in
Winnebago--she and that brisk, alert, courageous woman.

"Mrs. Brandeis, lady wants to know if you can't put this blue satin
dress on the dark-haired doll, and the pink satin.... Well, I did tell
her, but she said for me to ask you, anyway."

"Mis' Brandeis, this man says he paid a dollar down on a go-cart last
month and he wants to pay the rest and take it home with him."

And then the reassuring, authoritative voice, "Coming! I'll be right
there."

"Coming!" That had been her whole life. Service. And now she lay so
quietly beneath the snow of the bitter northern winter.

At that point Fanny's fist would come down hard on her desk, and the
quick, indrawn breath of mutinous resentment would hiss through her
teeth.

She kept away from the downtown shops and their crowds. She scowled at
sight of the holly and mistletoe wreaths, with their crimson streamers.
There was something almost ludicrous in the way she shut her eyes to the
holiday pageant all around her, and doubled and redoubled her work. It
seemed that she had a new scheme for her department every other day, and
every other one was a good one.

Slosson had long ago abandoned the attempt to keep up with her. He did
not even resent her, as he had at first. "I'm a buyer," he said, rather
pathetically, "and a pret-ty good one, too. But I'm not a genius, and
I never will be. And I guess you've got to be a genius, these days,
to keep up. It used to be enough for an infants' wear buyer to
know muslins, cottons, woolens, silks, and embroideries. But that's
old-fashioned now. These days, when you hire an office boy you don't ask
him if he can read and write. You tell him he's got to have personality,
magnetism, and imagination. Makes me sick!"

The Baby Book came off the presses and it was good. Even Slosson
admitted it, grudgingly. The cover was a sunny, breezy seashore picture,
all blue and gold, with plump, dimpled youngsters playing, digging in
the sand, romping (and