and did not pause
for breath until she was in the basement. There it was so crowded and
so hot, though the store had been open to customers not quite an hour,
that there seemed little air to breathe, even had there been time.

Win could see no means of ventilation in the immense room, which was
brightly and crudely lit by pulsing white globes of electricity. There
were no partitions to divide one department from another, and it
seemed as if samples of every article in the world were being sold on
these rows upon rows of heaped-up tables.

Taking her for a customer, a floorwalker saved the bewildered girl
from wasting more than a minute of her valuable time. The thermometer
of his manner fell a degree when he learned that she was an employee;
nevertheless, he directed her to the bargain counter where black dress
skirts were being sold. There was another nearby which offered black
silk and satin blouses. The man asked if she had been told that extra
hands, if on probation, must give money down for anything above the
first week's wage, and looked impressed when the tall girl answered
that she preferred to pay cash for the whole.

"Princess, queen!" he murmured _sotto voce_, and Win might have had
the privilege of exchanging a smile with him on the strength of the
joke, but thought it might be wiser not to have heard.

Luckily black skirts and blouses were not the craze of the moment.
Women were besieging a beehive of corsets and a hotbed of petticoats,
reduced (so said huge red letters overhead) to one third of their
original price. In less than five minutes Win had secured a costume
with the right measurements, and for the two portions of which it
consisted, had paid exactly one week's salary.

With an unwrapped parcel rolled under one arm, she battled her way
back to the staircase she had descended (not daring to squeeze her
unworthy body into a crowded elevator), and toiled up to the eighth
floor. There, she had been told, were dressing-rooms as well as
lockers; a rest room (converted into a schoolroom from the hour of
eight until ten), and the restaurant for women employees.

Lightning change act first! Black Effect to take the place of brown,
a rush for the dressing-room, vague impression of near marble basins
and rows of mirrors; tall, slim girl in front of one, quite the proper
"saleslady" air, in new, six-dollar black skirt and silk blouse
lightened with sewed-in frills of white, fit not noticeably bad; dash