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9:34. Racks for sale dresses are stripped clean. Two women tugging on a Dior dress tear its seams. Caught in crush, one elderly lady faints and is hurried off to first aid. Survivors scurry off to corners, sort through dresses, throwing rejects on floor. They swap sizes with one another and exchange telephone numbers for later bartering. Mrs. Conroy: "You've got to hold your dresses tightly; otherwise some of those old squaws will sneak up behind you and snitch a few of them."
9:50. Conroys regroup, look over each other's finds, finger material, check labels, and return unwanted items. Mrs. Conroy, who spends upwards of $500 each month (most of it for friends, who reimburse her), says: "It's easy to get carried away. So as a check we always ask each other: 'Do you really need this?' "
10:00. Shoppers crowd before mirrors trying on clothes. One woman removes her raincoat, turns seconds later to find another woman trying it on. Since there are no dressing rooms, shoppers pull on three, four dresses, one over the other. Others unashamedly strip to bra and panties. "A few years ago," says Manager Gormley, "so many men were spending lunch hours staring down at the women from the stairwell that we had to build partitions."
11:00. Stockboys wheel out new racks of dresses and are immediately mobbed. Mrs. Conroy: "We sort of crunch those poor boys up against the wall, grab what we can and then, resuming our ladylike dignity, trip off."
11:15. Conroys emerge from basement with day's take: last week's haul included eight place settings of gold-plated flatware for $39.95 (original price: $110), a man's fake suede car coat for $6 (originally $25), four pairs of lined, imported gloves at $5 each (originally $16), and a framed painting of a Spanish warrior for $14.95 (once close to $50). "A good shopper needs only one to two hours to case the place," says Mrs. Conroy. "Longer than that and you begin to get headaches."
9:30 P.M. Basement closes. Stockboys begin job of cleaning up mounds of hangers and dresses on floor. Gormley checks day's receipts (close to $300,000): "All in all, a fairly routine day."
THAT NIGHT. At home in Needham Mrs. Conroy and Terry sort through day's buys, setting some aside to be wrapped for Christmas, others for storage in a special closet they had built in their basement for the surplus. As they hold up each item, they ask: "Do we really need this?" And each time, giggling like schoolgirls, they answer: "Oh yes! Yes!"