Fanny Herself | Page 7

following standing before the bedroom mirror, with her hair
pulled out in a wild fluff in front, her mother's old marten-fur scarf high
and choky around her neck, trying to smile that slow, sad, poignant,
tear-compelling smile; but she had to give it up, clever mimic though

she was. She only succeeded in looking as though a pin were sticking
her somewhere. Besides, Fanny's own smile was a quick, broad,
flashing grin, with a generous glint of white teeth in it, and she always
forgot about being exquisitely wistful over it until it was too late.
I wonder if the story of the china religious figures will give a wrong
impression of Mrs. Brandeis. Perhaps not, if you will only remember
this woman's white-lipped determination to wrest a livelihood from the
world, for her children and herself. They had been in Chicago a week,
and she was buying at Bauder & Peck's. Now, Bauder & Peck,
importers, are known the world over. It is doubtful if there is one of
you who has not been supplied, indirectly, with some imported bit of
china or glassware, with French opera glasses or cunning toys and dolls,
from the great New York and Chicago showrooms of that company.
Young Bauder himself was waiting on Mrs. Brandeis, and he was
frowning because he hated to sell women. Young Bauder was being
broken into the Chicago end of the business, and he was not taking
gracefully to the process.
At the end of a long aisle, on an obscure shelf in a dim corner, Molly
Brandeis' sharp eyes espied a motley collection of dusty, grimy china
figures of the kind one sees on the mantel in the parlor of the
small-town Catholic home. Winnebago's population was two-thirds
Catholic, German and Irish, and very devout.
Mrs. Brandeis stopped short. "How much for that lot?" She pointed to
the shelf. Young Bauder's gaze followed hers, puzzled. The figures
were from five inches to a foot high, in crude, effective blues, and gold,
and crimson, and white. All the saints were there in assorted sizes, the
Pieta, the cradle in the manger. There were probably two hundred or
more of the little figures. "Oh, those!" said young Bauder vaguely.
"You don't want that stuff. Now, about that Limoges china. As I said, I
can make you a special price on it if you carry it as an open-stock
pattern. You'll find----"
"How much for that lot?" repeated Mrs. Brandeis.

"Those are left-over samples, Mrs. Brandeis. Last year's stuff. They're
all dirty. I'd forgotten they were there."
"How much for the lot?" said Mrs. Brandeis, pleasantly, for the third
time.
"I really don't know. Three hundred, I should say. But----"
"I'll give you two hundred," ventured Mrs. Brandeis, her heart in her
mouth and her mouth very firm.
"Oh, come now, Mrs. Brandeis! Bauder & Peck don't do business that
way, you know. We'd really rather not sell them at all. The things aren't
worth much to us, or to you, for that matter. But three hundred----"
"Two hundred," repeated Mrs. Brandeis, "or I cancel my order,
including the Limoges. I want those figures."
And she got them. Which isn't the point of the story. The holy figures
were fine examples of foreign workmanship, their colors, beneath the
coating of dust, as brilliant and fadeless as those found in the churches
of Europe. They reached Winnebago duly, packed in straw and paper,
still dusty and shelf-worn. Mrs. Brandeis and Sadie and Pearl sat on
up-ended boxes at the rear of the store, in the big barn- like room in
which newly arrived goods were unpacked. As Aloysius dived deep
into the crate and brought up figure after figure, the three women
plunged them into warm and soapy water and proceeded to bathe and
scour the entire school of saints, angels, and cherubim. They came out
brilliantly fresh and rosy.
All the Irish ingenuity and artistry in Aloysius came to the surface as he
dived again and again into the great barrel and brought up the glittering
pieces.
"It'll make an elegant window," he gasped from the depths of the hay,
his lean, lengthy frame jack-knifed over the edge. "And cheap." His
shrewd wit had long ago divined the store's price mark. "If Father
Fitzpatrick steps by in the forenoon I'll bet they'll be gone before

nighttime to- morrow. You'll be letting me do the trim, Mrs. Brandeis?"
He came back that evening to do it, and he threw his whole soul into it,
which, considering his ancestry and temperament, was very high
voltage for one small-town store window. He covered the floor of the
window with black crepe paper, and hung it in long folds, like a curtain,
against the rear wall. The gilt of the scepters, and halos, and capes
showed