With this in mind, on the Sunday before Rose went away, she had studied the dramatic section of the morning paper with a good deal of care and was rewarded by finding among the news notes, an item referring to a new musical comedy that was to be produced at the Globe Theater immediately after the Christmas holidays. The Girl Up-stairs was the title of it.  It was spoken of as one of the regular Globe productions, so it was probable that Jimmy Wallace’s experience with the production of an earlier number in the series would at least give her something to go by.  The thing must be in rehearsal now.

Granted that she was going to be a chorus-girl for a while, she could hardly find a better place than one of the Globe productions to be one in.  According to Jimmy Wallace, it was a decent enough little place, and yet it possessed the advantage of being spiritually as well as actually, west of Clark Street.  Rodney’s friends were less likely to go there, and so have a chance of recognizing her, than to any other theater in the city, barring of course the flagrantly and shamelessly vulgar ones of the purlieus.

Among her older friends of school and college days, the chances were of course worse.  But even if she were seen on the stage by people who knew her, even though they were to say to each other that that girl looked surprisingly like Rose Aldrich, this would be a very different thing from full recognition.  She would be well protected by the utter unlikelihood of her being in such a place; by the absence of anybody’s knowledge that she had flown off at a tangent from the orbit of Rodney’s world.  Then, too, she’d be somewhat disguised no doubt, by make-up.  Of course with all those considerations weighed at their full value, there remained a risk that she would be fully discovered and recognized.  But it was a risk that couldn’t be avoided, whatever she did.

She entertained for a while, the notion of taking Jimmy Wallace into her confidence—­he had as many depositors of confidences on his books, as a savings bank, and he was just as safe.  It was altogether likely that he could get her a job out of hand.  He was still on the best of terms with the Globe people, and he was a really influential critic.  But even if he didn’t get her a job outright, he could at least tell her how to set about getting one for herself—­where to go, whom to ask for, the right way to phrase her request, which makes such an enormous difference in things of that kind.

But she wasn’t long in abandoning the notion of appealing to Jimmy at all.  The corner-stone of her new adventure must be that she was doing things for herself; that she was through being helped, having ways smoothed for her, things done for her.  If she owed her first job even indirectly to Jimmy, all the rest of her structure would be out of plumb.  Whatever success she might have would be tainted by the misgiving that but for somebody else’s help, she might have failed.  Rose Stanton who had rented that three-dollar room was going to be beholden to nobody!