From the first of December the floor of the Haynes-Cooper mail room looked like the New York Stock Exchange, after a panic. The aisles were drifts of paper against which a squad of boys struggled as vainly as a gang of snow-shovelers against a blizzard. The guide talked in terms of tons of mail, instead of thousands. And smacked his lips after it. The Ten Thousand were working at night now, stopping for a hasty bite of supper at six, then back to desk, or bin or shelf until nine, so that Oklahoma and Minnesota might have its Christmas box in time.

Fanny Brandeis, working under the light of her green-shaded desk lamp, 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 wearing our No. 13E1269, etc., of course). Inside were displayed the complete baby outfits, with a smiling mother, and a chubby, crowing baby as a central picture, and each piece of each outfit separately pictured. Just below this, the outfit number and price, and a list of the pieces that went to make it up. From the emergency outfit at $3.98 to the outfit de luxe (for Haynes-Cooper patrons) at $28.50, each group was comprehensive, practical, complete. In the back of the book was a personal service plea. “Use us,” it said. “We are here to assist you, not only in the matter of merchandise, but with information and advice. Mothers in particular are in need of such service. This book will save you weariness and worry. Use us.”

Fanny surveyed the book with pardonable pride. But she was not satisfied. “We lack style,” she said. “The practical garments are all right. But what we need is a little snap. That means cut and line. And I\'m going to New York to get it.” That had always been Slosson\'s work.

She and Ella Monahan were to go to the eastern markets together. Ella Monahan went to New York regularly every three weeks. Fanny had never been east of Chicago. She envied Ella her knowledge of the New York wholesalers and manufacturers. Ella had dropped into Fanny\'s office for a brief moment. The two women had little in common, except their work, but they got on very well, and each found the other educating.

“Seems to me you\'re putting an awful lot into this,” observed Ella Monahan, her wise eyes on Fanny\'s rather tense face.

“You\'ve got to,” replied Fanny, “to get anything out of it.”

“I guess you\'re right,” Ella agreed, and laughed a rueful little laugh. “I know I\'ve given \'em everything I\'ve got—and a few things I didn\'t know I had. It\'s a queer game—life. Now if my old father hadn\'t run a tannery in Racine, and if I hadn\'t run around there all the day, so that I got so the smell and feel of leather and hides were part of me, why, I\'d never be buyer of gloves at Haynes-Cooper. And you——”

“Brandeis\' Bazaar.” And was going on, when her office boy came in with a name. Ella rose to go, but Fanny stopped her. “Father Fitzpatrick! Bring him right in! Miss Monahan, you\'ve got to meet him. He\'s”—then, as the great frame of the handsome old priest filled the doorway—“he\'s just Father Fitzpatrick. Ella Monahan.”

The white-haired Irishman, and the white-haired Irish woman clasped hands.