“Oh, lord!” groaned Slosson, and slumped disgustedly in his seat.
But Fenger got up, came over to Fanny, and put a hand on her shoulder for a moment. He looked down at her. “I knew you'd do it.” He smiled queerly. “Tell me, where did you learn all this?”
“I don't know,” faltered Fanny happily. “Brandeis' Bazaar, perhaps. It's just another case of plush photograph album.”
“Plush—?”
Fanny told him that story. Even the discomfited Slosson grinned at it.
But after ten minutes more of general discussion Slosson left. Fenger, without putting it in words, had conveyed that to him. Fanny stayed. They did things that way at Haynes-Cooper. No waste. No delay. That she had accomplished in two months that which ordinarily takes years was not surprising. They did things that way, too, at Haynes-Cooper. Take the case of Nathan Haynes himself. And Michael Fenger too who, not so many years before, had been a machine-boy in a Racine woolen mill.
For my part, I confess that Fanny Brandeis begins to lose interest for me. Big Business seems to dwarf the finer things in her. That red-cheeked, shabby little schoolgirl, absorbed in Zola and peanut brittle in the Winnebago library, was infinitely more appealing than this glib and capable young woman. The spitting wildcat of the street fight so long ago was gentler by far than this cool person who was so deliberately taking his job away from Slosson. You, too, feel that way about her? That is as it should be. It is the penalty they pay who, given genius, sympathy, and understanding as their birthright, trade them for the tawdry trinkets money brings.
Perhaps the last five minutes of that conference between Fanny and Michael Fenger reveals a new side, and presents something of interest. It was a harrowing and unexpected five minutes.
You may remember how Michael Fenger had a way of looking at one, silently. It was an intent and concentrated gaze that had the effect of an actual physical hold. Most people squirmed under it. Fanny, feeling it on her now, frowned and rose to leave.
“Shall you want to talk these things over again? Of course I've only outlined them, roughly. You gave me so little time.”