The aunt and the grandmother were up betimes the next morning, looking over some meagre stores of old clothing, and there was found an old dress which it was thought could be furbished over for Elizabeth.  They were hard-working people with little money to spare, and everything had to be utilized; but they made a great deal of appearance, and Lizzie was proud as a young peacock.  She would not take Elizabeth to the store to face the head man without having her fixed up according to the most approved style.

So the aunt cut and fitted before she went off for the day, and Elizabeth was ordered to sew while she was gone.  The grandmother presided at the rattling old sewing-machine, and in two or three days Elizabeth was pronounced to be fixed up enough to do for the present till she could earn some new clothes.  With her fine hair snarled into a cushion and puffed out into an enormous pompadour that did not suit her face in the least, and with an old hat and jacket of Lizzie’s which did not become her nor fit her exactly, she started out to make her way in the world as a saleswoman.  Lizzie had already secured her a place if she suited.

The store was a maze of wonder to the girl from the mountains—­so many bright, bewildering things, ribbons and tin pans, glassware and toys, cheap jewelry and candies.  She looked about with the dazed eyes of a creature from another world.

But the manager looked upon her with eyes of favor.  He saw that her eyes were bright and keen.  He was used to judging faces.  He saw that she was as yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the girls who applied to him for positions.  And he was not beyond a friendly flirtation with a pretty new girl himself; so she was engaged at once, and put on duty at the notion-counter.

The girls flocked around her during the intervals of custom.  Lizzie had told of her cousin’s long ride, embellished, wherever her knowledge failed, by her extremely wild notions of Western life.  She had told how Elizabeth arrived wearing a belt with two pistols, and this gave Elizabeth standing at once among all the people in the store.  A girl who could shoot, and who wore pistols in a belt like a real cowboy, had a social distinction all her own.

The novel-reading, theatre-going girls rallied around her to a girl; and the young men in the store were not far behind.  Elizabeth was popular from the first.  Moreover, as she settled down into the routine of life, and had three meals every day, her cheeks began to round out just a little; and it became apparent that she was unusually beautiful in spite of her dark skin, which whitened gradually under the electric light and high-pressure life of the store.

They went to Christian Endeavor, Elizabeth and her cousin; and Elizabeth felt as if heaven had suddenly dropped down about her.  She lived from week to week for that Christian Endeavor.