"I seem to remember a Jewess named Ruth who was left
widowed, and who gleaned in the fields for her living, and
yet the neighbors didn't talk. For that matter, she seems
to be pretty well thought of, to this day."
But there is no denying that she lost caste among her own
people. Custom and training are difficult to overcome. But
Molly Brandeis was too deep in her own affairs to care.
That Christmas season following her husband's death was
a ghastly time, and yet a grimly wonderful one, for it
applied the acid test to Molly Brandeis and showed her up
pure gold.
The first week in January she, with Sadie and Pearl, the two
clerks, and Aloysius, the boy, took inventory. It was a
terrifying thing, that process of casting up accounts. It
showed with such starkness how hideously the Brandeis ledger
sagged on the wrong side. The three women and the boy
worked with a sort of dogged cheerfulness at it, counting,
marking, dusting, washing. They found shelves full of
forgotten stock, dust-covered and profitless. They found
many articles of what is known as hard stock, akin to the
plush album; glass and plated condiment casters for the
dining table, in a day when individual salts and separate
vinegar cruets were already the thing; lamps with straight
wicks when round wicks were in demand.
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