had suggested. She went through it, not as the startled,
wide-eyed girl of eight months before had gone, but
critically, and with a little unconscious air of authority.
For, this organization, vast though it was, actually showed
her imprint. She could have put her finger on this spot,
and that, saying, "Here is the mark of my personality." And
she thought, as she passed from department to department,
"Ten thousand a year, if you keep on as you've started." Up
one aisle and down the next. Bundles, bundles, bundles.
And everywhere you saw the yellow order-slips. In the hands
of the stock boys whizzing by on roller skates; in the
filing department; in the traffic department. The very air
seemed jaundiced with those clouds of yellow order-slips.
She stopped a moment, fascinated as always before the main
spiral gravity chute down which the bundles--hundreds of
them, thousands of them daily--chased each other to--to
what? Fanny asked herself. She knew, vaguely, that hands
caught these bundles halfway, and redirected them toward the
proper channel, where they were assembled and made ready for
shipping or mailing. She turned to a stock boy.

"Where does this empty?" she asked.

"Floor below," said the boy, "on the platform."

Fanny walked down a flight of iron stairs, and around to
face the spiral chute again. In front of the chute, and
connected with it by a great metal lip, was a platform
perhaps twelve feet above the floor and looking very much
like the pilot's deck of a ship. A little flight of steps