a variety that could be got nowhere else this side of
Chicago. If, after greeting you, Mrs. Brandeis called,
"Sadie! Stockings!" (supposing stockings were your quest),
you might know that Mrs. Brandeis had weighed you and found
you wanting.

There had always been a store--at least, ever since Fanny
could remember. She often thought how queer it would seem
to have to buy pins, or needles, or dishes, or soap, or
thread. The store held all these things, and many more.
Just to glance at the bewildering display outside gave you
promise of the variety within. Winnebago was rather ashamed
of that display. It was before the day of repression in
decoration, and the two benches in front of the windows
overflowed with lamps, and water sets, and brooms, and
boilers and tinware and hampers. Once the Winnebago
Courier had had a sarcastic editorial about what they
called the Oriental bazaar (that was after the editor, Lem
Davis, had bumped his shin against a toy cart that protruded
unduly), but Mrs. Brandeis changed nothing. She knew that
the farmer women who stood outside with their husbands on
busy Saturdays would not have understood repression in
display, but they did understand the tickets that marked the
wares in plain figures--this berry set, $1.59; that lamp,
$1.23. They talked it over, outside, and drifted away, and
came back, and entered, and bought.

She knew when to be old-fashioned, did Mrs. Brandeis, and
when to be modern. She had worn the first short walking
skirt in Winnebago. It cleared the ground in a day before