r normal conditions. But there was this strike-talk, its
ugly head bobbing up in a hundred places. And their goods were the kind
that required high-class workers. Their girls earned all the way from
twelve to twenty-five dollars. But Fanny knew she had driven home
the entering wedge. She left them after making an engagement for
the following day. The Horn & Udell factory was in New York's newer
loft-building section, around Madison, Fifth avenue, and the Thirties.
Her hotel was very near. She walked up Fifth avenue a little way, and as
she walked she wondered why she did not feel more elated. Her day's work
had exceeded her expectations. It was a brilliant January afternoon,
with a snap in the air that was almost western. Fifth avenue flowed up,
flowed down, and Fanny fought the impulse to stare after every second or
third woman she passed. They were so invariably well-dressed. There was
none of the occasional shabbiness or dowdiness of Michigan Avenue. Every
woman seemed to have emerged fresh from the hands of masseuse and maid.
Their hair was coiffed to suit the angle of the hat, and the hat had
been chosen to enhance the contour of the head, and the head was carried
with regard for the dark furs that encircled the throat. They were
amazingly well shod. Their white gloves were white. (A fact remarkable
to any soot-haunted Chicagoan.) Their coloring rivaled the rose leaf.
And nobody's nose was red.

"Goodness knows I've never pretended to be a beauty," Fanny said that
evening, in conversation with Ella Monahan. "But I've always thought
I had my good points. By the time I'd reached Forty-second street I
wouldn't have given two cents for my chances of winning a cave man on a
desert island."

She made up her mind that she would go back to the hotel, get a thick
coat, and ride outside one of those fascinating Fifth avenue 'buses. It
struck her as an ideal way to see this amazing street. She was back at
her hotel in ten minutes. Ella had not yet come in. Their rooms were on
the tenth floor. Fanny got her coat, peered at her own reflection in
the mirror, sighed, shook her head, and was off down the hall toward the
elevators. The great hall window looked toward Fifth avenue, but between
it and the avenue rose a yellow-brick building that housed tier on
tier of manufacturing lofts. Cloaks, suits, blouses, petticoats, hats,
dresses--it was just such a building as Fanny had come from when she
left the offices of Horn & Udell. I