Rose dusted the mirror with a towel—­a reckless act, as she saw for herself, when she discovered she was going to have to use that towel for a week—­and took an appraising look at herself.  Then she nodded confidently—­there was nothing the matter 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 results with convincing vivacity at their little dinners afterward.  There was no thoroughfare there.