They were using bicycles now, with a bundle rack in the
front, in the vast stock rooms, and the roller skates had
been discarded as too slow. The stock boys skimmed around
corners on these lightweight bicycles, up one aisle, and
down the next, snatching bundles out of bins, shooting
bundles into bins, as expertly as players in a gymkhana.
Theodore saw the uncanny rapidity with which the letter-
opening machines did their work. He watched the great
presses that turned out the catalogue--the catalogue
whose message meant millions; he sat in Fenger's office and
stared at the etchings, and said, "Certainly," with
politeness, when Fenger excused himself in the midst of a
conversation to pick up the telephone receiver and talk to
their shoe factory in Maine. He ended up finally in Fanny's
office, no longer a dingy and undesirable corner, but a
quietly brisk center that sent out vibrations over the
entire plant. Slosson, incidentally, was no longer of the
infants' wear. He had been transferred to a subordinate
position in the grocery section.
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