Cloaks, suits, blouses, petticoats,
hats, dresses--it was just such a building as Fanny had come
from when she left the offices of Horn & Udell. It might be
their very building, for all she knew. She looked straight
into its windows as she stood waiting for the lift. And
window after window showed women, sewing. They were sewing
at machines, and at hand-work, but not as women are
accustomed to sew, with leisurely stitches, stopping to pat
a seam here, to run a calculating eye along hem or ruffle.
It was a dreadful, mechanical motion, that sewing, a
machine-like, relentless motion, with no waste in it, no
pause. Fanny's mind leaped back to Winnebago, with its
pleasant porches on which leisurely women sat stitching
peacefully at a fine seam.
What was it she had said to Udell? "Can't you speed up the
workroom? It's worth it."
Fanny turned abruptly from the window as the door of the
bronze and mirrored lift opened for her. She walked over to
Fifth avenue again and up to Forty-fifth street. Then she
scrambled up the spiral stairs of a Washington Square 'bus.
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