t might be their very building, for
all she knew. She looked straight into its windows as she stood waiting
for the lift. And window after window showed women, sewing. They were
sewing at machines, and at hand-work, but not as women are accustomed
to sew, with leisurely stitches, stopping to pat a seam here, to run
a calculating eye along hem or ruffle. It was a dreadful, mechanical
motion, that sewing, a machine-like, relentless motion, with no waste in
it, no pause. Fanny's mind leaped back to Winnebago, with its pleasant
porches on which leisurely women sat stitching peacefully at a fine
seam.

What was it she had said to Udell? "Can't you speed up the workroom? It's
worth it."

Fanny turned abruptly from the window as the door of the bronze and
mirrored lift opened for her. She walked over to Fifth avenue again and
up to Forty-fifth street. Then she scrambled up the spiral stairs of a
Washington Square 'bus. The air was crisp, clear, intoxicating. To her
Chicago eyes the buildings, the streets, the very sky looked startlingly
fresh and new-washed. As the 'bus lurched down Fifth avenue she leaned
over the railing to stare, fascinated, at the colorful, shifting,
brilliant panorama of the most amazing street in the world. Block after
block, as far as the eye could see, the gorgeous procession moved up,
moved down, and the great, gleaming motor cars crept, and crawled, and
writhed in and out, like nothing so much as swollen angle worms in a
fishing can, Fanny thought. Her eye was caught by one limousine that
stood out, even in that crush of magnificence. It was all black, as
though scorning to attract the eye with vulgar color, and it was lined
with white. Fanny thought it looked very much like Siegel & Cowan's
hearse, back in Winnebago. In it sat a woman, all furs, and orchids,
and complexion. She was holding up to the window a little dog with a
wrinkled and weary face, like that of an old, old man. He was sticking
his little evil, eager red tongue out at the world. And he wore a very
smart and woolly white sweater, of the imported kind--with a monogram
done in black.

The traffic policeman put up his hand. The 'bus rumbled on down the
street. Names that had always been remotely mythical to her now met her
eye and became realities. Maillard's. And that great red stone
castle was the Waldorf. Almost historic, and it looked newer than the
smoke-grimed Blackstone. And straight ahead--why, that must be the
Flatiron bui