making. Accident of birth, and not primogeniture, makes master minds and
mulattoes, seamstresses and rich men's sons. Wharf-rats are more often
born than made.

That is why, in this dynasty not of man's making, weavers gone blind
from the intricacies of their queen's coronation robe, can kneel at her
hem to kiss the cloth of gold that cursed them. A peasant can look on
at a poet with no thought to barter his black bread and lentils for
a single gossamer fancy. Backstair slaveys vie with each other whose
master is more mighty. And this is the story of Millie Moores who, with
no anarchy in her heart and no feud with the human democracy, could
design for women to whom befell the wine and pearl dog-collars of life,
frocks as sheer as web, and on her knees beside them, her mouth full of
pins and her sole necklace a tape-measure, thrill to see them garbed in
the glory of her labor.

Indeed, when the iridescent bubble of reputation floated out from her
modest dressmaking rooms in East Twenty-third Street, Millie Moores,
whom youth had rushed past, because she had no leisure for it, felt her
heart open like a grateful flower when life brought her more chores to
do. And when one day a next-year's-model limousine drew up outside her
small doorway with the colored fashion sheet stuck in the glass panel,
and one day another, and then one spring day three of them in shining
procession along her curb, something cheeped in Millie Moores's heart
and she doubled her prices.

And then because ladies long of purse and short of breath found the
three dark flights difficult, and because the first small fruit of
success burst in Millie Moores's mouth, releasing its taste of wine,
she withdrew her three-figure savings account from the Manhattan Trust