The years of the war rolled by. In time khaki-clad Americans marched up Fifth Avenue and were whisked mysteriously away. The war became a grim, horrible reality and its influence was felt in time even in the quietude of Francine’s. Mimi worked on uncomplainingly, steadily, intelligently. She loved to handle the delicate fabrics, especially those of brilliant colours. To her the filmy stuffs were embodiments of a land far, far away from harsh realities. When no one was looking she would run through her fingers a fragile bit of silk or chiffon, smoky blue or icy green, as a miser would his gold. Most of all she loved the passionate reds, the vivid blues, the more pronounced shades. In a world of indefinite gropings they were to her positive, real things instead of the vaporous and lighter shades. She often laughed at her foolish dreams interwoven with these fabrics—the little glamorous stories she made up for her own amusement to relieve the tedium of endless rows of threads and bastings. Yet, they gave her comfort and she continued to dream. …
Her skill and her inventiveness in time penetrated even to that sacred, dread room on the third floor where Madame Francine herself sat in stately splendour when she was at the shop. Mimi had been at work there for nearly a year when she had been made a draper’s assistant. Her time had stretched into a year and a half when she had become a draper. Soon after America had entered the war, when wives whose husbands had become enormously rich overnight began to hear for the first time that it was “the thing to do” to have Lucile or Frances or Bendel or Francine make their clothes for them, Mimi had become a fitter with some thirty girls under her. She had purchased a few Liberty Bonds. Some more money she had put into certain stocks which gave promise of yielding comfortable returns. In time she hoped to put some money into real estate where she could be sure Jean would be provided for, whatever happened to her.
More often now did she come into direct contact with the customers. Of them all, there was none so hard to satisfy as the queenly querulous