ter with her looks--and resumed
her ulster, her rubbers and her umbrella, for it was the kind of
December day that called for all three. Her landlady could stick the
receipt under the door, she reflected, as she locked it.

Two blocks down the street, she found, as predicted, the cigar store
with the blue sign, "Schulz Express," and left her trunk check there
with her address and fifty cents. Then, putting up her umbrella, and
glowingly conscious that she was saving a nickel by so doing, she set
off down-town afoot to get a job. She meant to get it that very
afternoon. And, partly because she meant to so very definitely, she did.

I don't mean to say that getting a job is a purely volitional matter.
There is the factor of luck, always large of course, though not quite so
large as a great many people suppose, and the factor of intelligence.
Rose's intelligence had been in pretty active training for the last
year. Ever since her talk with Simone Greville had set her thinking, she
had been learning how to weigh and assess facts apart from their
emotional nebulae. She'd taught herself how to look a disagreeable or
humiliating fact in the face as steadily and as coolly as she looked at
any other fact.

She had accumulated a whole lot of facts about women in industry from
Barry Lake and Jane. She knew the sort of job and the sort of pay that
the average untrained woman gets. She knew some of the reasons why the
pay was so miserably, intolerably small. She knew about the vast army of
young women who weren't expected to be fully self-supporting, who
counted on marrying comfortably enough some day, and accepted board and
lodging at home as one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if
they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive
enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the
stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather
get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as
long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd
take that, cheerfully oblivious to the fact, as naturally one might
expect them to be, that by taking six, they established a standard at
which a girl who had to earn her own living simply couldn't live.

Rose knew exactly what would happen to her if she went to one of the big
State Street department stores and asked for a job. Jane had been trying
some experiments lately, and stating her resu