me about? I'd like to start gettin' some of my wardrobe on the instalment."
"All right. I'll go with you just as soon as Letcher calls it a day."
Letcher called it a day at 3:15.
Minnie, confident that her name was listed among those to work the following morning, signed her voucher slip, cashed it and hurried to meet Eleanor. Neither of them noticed that Letcher avoided saying good-by. They were too busy speculating how much Minnie would need to complete the first layout of her wardrobe. Eleanor suggested three dresses (she had another one she could sell Minnie for eight dollars), a suit and several hats. Minnie had already made three payments, reducing her debt to Eleanor by four dollars and a half.
Madame Papillon's on 59th, a few doors from Lexington, to which Eleanor took Minnie, was a shop where one could get the most remarkable bargains. "If you want to look chic," said Eleanor, "you've got to get your fashions from these French modistes."
Madame Papillon, who spoke with a charming French accent, began life as Sadie Moskowitz. She was born of German-Polish parents, in the rear of a dingy second-hand store on the lower East Side. At ten Sadie was working in a sweatshop. By the time she was fourteen she was head embroiderer in a wholesale factory; at eighteen, Sadie Moskowitz, who had changed her name to Moss, was a designer for a second-rate dressmaking establishment. At twenty-five she bought a store on Lexington, near 59th, and became Madame Moskowitz; a year later she moved around the corner and called herself Madame Papillon. When she made
