one get work?

She walked along the Strand and across Trafalgar Square, and by the
Haymarket to Piccadilly, and so through dignified squares and palatial
alleys to Oxford Street; and her mind was divided between a speculative
treatment of employment on the one hand, and breezes--zephyr breezes--of
the keenest appreciation for London, on the other. The jolly part of it
was that for the first time in her life so far as London was concerned,
she was not going anywhere in particular; for the first time in her life
it seemed to her she was taking London in.

She tried to think how people get work. Ought she to walk into some
of these places and tell them what she could do? She hesitated at the
window of a shipping-office in Cockspur Street and at the Army and
Navy Stores, but decided that perhaps there would be some special and
customary hour, and that it would be better for her to find this out
before she made her attempt. And, besides, she didn't just immediately
want to make her attempt.

She fell into a pleasant dream of positions and work. Behind every one
of these myriad fronts she passed there must be a career or careers. Her
ideas of women's employment and a modern woman's pose in life were based
largely on the figure of Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren's Profession. She
had seen Mrs. Warren's Profession furtively with Hetty Widgett from the
gallery of a Stage Society performance one Monday afternoon. Most of
it had been incomprehensible to her, or comprehensible in a way that
checked further curiosity, but the figure of Vivien, hard, capable,
successful, and bullying, and ordering about a veritable Teddy in the
person of Frank Gardner, appealed to her. She saw herself in very much
Vivie's position--managing something.

Her thoughts were deflected from Vivie Warren by the peculiar behavior
of a middle-aged gentleman in Piccadilly. He appeared suddenly from
the infinite in the neighborhood of the Burlington Arcade, crossing
the pavement toward her and with his eyes upon her. He seemed to her
indistinguishably about her father's age. He wore a silk hat a little
tilted, and a morning coat buttoned round a tight, contained figure;
and a white slip gave a finish to his costume and endorsed the quiet
distinction of his tie. His face was a little flushed perhaps, and his
small, brown eyes were bright. He stopped on the curb-stone, not facing
her but as if he was on his way to cross the road, and spoke to her
suddenly over h