59; that lamp,
$1.23. They talked it over, outside, and drifted away, and
came back, and entered, and bought.
She knew when to be old-fashioned, did Mrs. Brandeis, and
when to be modern. She had worn the first short walking
skirt in Winnebago. It cleared the ground in a day before
germs were discovered, when women's skirts trailed and
flounced behind them in a cloud of dust. One of her
scandalized neighbors (Mrs. Nathan Pereles, it was) had
taken her aside to tell her that no decent woman would dress
that way.
"Next year," said Mrs. Brandeis, "when you are wearing one,
I'll remind you of that." And she did, too. She had worn
shirtwaists with a broad "Gibson" shoulder tuck, when other
Winnebago women were still encased in linings and bodices.
Do not get the impression that she stood for emancipation,
or feminism, or any of those advanced things. They had
scarcely been touched on in those days. She was just an
extraordinarily alert woman, mentally and physically,
with a shrewd sense of values. Molly Brandeis never could
set a table without forgetting the spoons, or the salt, or
something, but she could add a double column of figures in
her head as fast as her eye could travel.
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