Street residents got into the habit of timing themselves by
Mrs. Brandeis. When she marched by at seven forty-five they
hurried a little with the tying of the hair bow, as they
glanced out of the window. When she came by again, a little
before twelve, for her hasty dinner, they turned up the fire
under the potatoes and stirred the flour thickening for the
gravy.

Mrs. Brandeis had soon learned that Fanny and Theodore could
manage their own school toilettes, with, perhaps, some
speeding up on the part of Mattie, the servant girl. But it
needed her keen brown eye to detect corners that Aloysius
had neglected to sweep out with wet sawdust, and her
presence to make sure that the counter covers were taken off
and folded, the outside show dusted and arranged, the
windows washed, the whole store shining and ready for
business by eight o'clock. So Fanny had even learned to do
her own tight, shiny, black, shoulder-length curls, which
she tied back with a black bow. They were wet, meek,
and tractable curls at eight in the morning. By the time
school was out at four they were as wildly unruly as if
charged with electric currents--which they really were, when
you consider the little dynamo that wore them.

Mrs. Brandeis took a scant half hour to walk the six blocks
between the store and the house, to snatch a hurried dinner,
and traverse the distance to the store again. It was a
program that would have killed a woman less magnificently
healthy and determined. She seemed to thrive on it, and she
kept her figure and her wit when other women of her age grew