Page:Women Wanted.djvu/221

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THE OPEN DOOR IN COMMERCE
203

pretty young woman in the chic hat, who sat opposite me at breakfast that morning, was near enough to reach it and daring enough to commandeer the sugar bowl for our common use. There is nothing, I believe, like a lump of sugar that so quickly makes war time travellers kin. That is the way I came to know Cecile Bornozi, new woman in commerce.

She is a type distinct from her predecessors in that old world of ours that is going up in battle smoke. Her brown hair is done in as coquettish a curl on her forehead, her eyes are as sparkling blue, her lips are as curving red as any girl's who used to have nothing to do but to dance the tango and pour afternoon tea. But her horizon has widened beyond the drawing room. Nor is she the business woman whom we have had with us for a generation. Why, the stenographer who takes my dictation is a business woman. But from her hand bag as another woman might produce a shopping list, Cecile Bornozi has just drawn forth a $50,000 bill of sale to her for a freight steamer.

She has just purchased it because of the increasing scarcity of tonnage in which to transport the fire brick that she is buying for the reconstruction of factory furnaces in the devastated districts of France. Yesterday she shipped 90 cwt. of oil boxes and bearings and 6 railway coal wagons. In the past few months she has sent over some 2000 railway wagons. Like this, during the past year, she has expended a million dollars for railway rolling stock that she rents to the French Government. She is specially