there was nothing vague about the
resolve to which she finally came--that she would fight her
battle herself.

Her unheeding wanderings led her after an hour or so to a big
department store. Crowds of shoppers, mussy, hot, and cross,
were pushing rudely in and out of the doors. She entered,
approached a well-dressed, bareheaded old gentleman, whom she
rightly placed as floorwalker, inquired of him:

"Where do they ask for work?"

She had been attracted to him because his was the one face
within view not suggesting temper or at least bad humor. It was
more than pleasant, it was benign. He inclined toward Susan with
an air that invited confidence and application for balm for a
wounded spirit. The instant the nature of her inquiry penetrated
through his pose to the man himself, there was a swift change to
lofty disdain--the familiar attitude of workers toward
fellow-workers of what they regard as a lower class. Evidently
he resented her having beguiled him by the false air of young
lady into wasting upon her, mere servility like himself, a
display reserved exclusively for patrons. It was Susan's first
experience of this snobbishness; it at once humbled her into the
dust. She had been put in her place, and that place was not
among people worthy of civil treatment. A girl of his own class
would have flashed at him, probably would have "jawed" him.
Susan meekly submitted; she was once more reminded that she was
an outcast, one for whom the respectable world had no place. He
made some sort of reply to her question, in the tone the usher
of a fashionable church would use to a stranger obviously not in
the same set as the habitues. She heard the tone, but not the
words; she turned away to seek the street again. She wandered
on--through the labyrinth of streets, through the crowds on
crowds of strangers.

Ten dollars a week! She knew little about wages, but enough to
realize the hopelessness of her quest. Ten dollars a week--and
her own keep beside. The faces of the crowds pushing past her
and jostling her made her heartsick. So much sickness, and
harassment, and discontent--so much unhappiness! Surely all
these sad hearts ought to be kind to each other. Yet they were
not; each soul went selfishly alone, thinking only of its own burden.

She walked on and on, thinking, in this disconnected way
characteristic of a good intelligence that has not yet developed
order and sequence, a theory of life and a pu