rooms opened as one of the seamstress managers came inside. "I pulled some of the extra silk and woolen fabric scraps and some trim for you. There's even a midnight blue silk taffeta from one of the ballgowns."
Idalie dug through the cloth bag. "Oh Clementine, these are lovely! Look at the cornflower blue wool...and is this curly beaver?" She looked up. "Really? This will make a lovely coat collar and perhaps there's even enough for a muff. Thank you, Clem." Her dolls next year would be even more beautifully dressed than this last year, which she had heard had sold out before the holiday shopping had hardly begun.
Chimes rang from a wooden speaker box in the corner warning the store would open in five minutes.
"I need to run," Clem said, heading for the door. "The orders have already tripled and the girls are sewing their hearts out and it's still weeks till Christmas." She paused. "I'll keep pulling for you. There are very few usable pieces left if my seniority didn't grant me first choice at the scrap and trim boxes. Every time I watch my Geneva playing with her doll, Idalie, I want to cry. I could have never bought her a doll like you made for her. It would have cost me two month's rent."
"I'll make a new gown for her for under the Christmas tree this year. and maybe a hooded cloak, like Little Red Riding Hood."
"Her favorite story."
"I know."
Clementine laughed. "Her doll is going to have a whole trousseau."
"Keep bringing me these and she will, Idalie said as she closed the bag. "See you later in the lunch room?"
Clementine nodded and closed the door behind her.
Idalie placed the cloth bag on a shelf in the box room since there was no time to go back down to her locker. She checked her hair, repinning a loose strand of blonde hair escaping her top bun, then turning to check the back of her uniform skirt in one of the many tall mirrors lining the walls of the large design room. No creases. With the milder weather, she had tried more often than not lately to save a nickel each way and walk to work instead of taking the crowded trolley.
The opening bells rang out through the whole store and her day began--Rowland & Company was open for business.
The Pinkerton guards had caught a gang of ruffians at the building site the night before. They claimed the damage was minimal, a gate knocked down and some wooden shipping boxes and crates broken into pieces and iron rivets scattered all over the site. The gates had been repaired, the rivets gathered, and the site cleaned before Ed and Hal arrived, but they had lost a full day of work and their schedule was already behind, the weather hadn't been an issue yet.
Ed walked the site with Hal, their contract supervisor, and the Pinkerton guard in charge, who said, "We think they broke in around 3 AM, through the back lots on 7th."
"We won't have electric lines in for another two weeks, so lighting the site has been difficult," the contractor added. "Once the electrical is in, we can light the place like Union Square."
"That should help," Hal said, "but we need to do something to protect the site for the next two weeks."
"Increase the guards," Ed said and they made plans as they finished walking the site.
By the time they had inspected the steel supports and on the upper floors, the sidewalks and nearby intersections had grown more crowded and the trolleys, horse-drawn cabs, and carriages were filling the streets with people leaving for home. The site was conveniently situated was across the street from the north entrance of a neighborhood park square and people in a hurry cut through rather than walk the longer blocks around it and his carriage was parked near the entrance, waiting.
Ed started to say something to his partner when he heard a loud bang and fell the ground shake from impact. He turned to see a pallet of five foot steel cross bar supports fall like dominoes from the top level of the building--the floor they had just inspected, landing like Jackstraws and rolling toward the gates.
As a section of fencing went down, crushed under the steel, Ed caught the silhouette of a woman stepping onto the sidewalk...unknowingly into the path of the steel. A heartbeat later he charged, hit the women full body, chest to chest, and took her down, tumbling with