“All right,” said Rose, “we’ll see.”

She walked straight from the judge’s office to the stairs beside the drug-store on the next corner, which led up to Miss Gibbons’ atelier.  She walked fast, conserving as a precious thing that might ebb away from her, the warm feeling of indignant contempt her talk with the judge had inspired her with.  He was the biggest man in this part of the state, was he!  Why, he was a hollow man!  A fabric of lath and plaster with no structural pillars inside!  Well, if the rest of the town was afraid of him, she certainly wasn’t afraid of the rest of the town.

She hadn’t any thought of conciliating Miss Gibbons, of asking Miss Gibbons to give her a chance.  She was going to give Miss Gibbons a chance to prove whether she was lath and plaster like the judge, or a real person with something besides her facade to hold her up.

So it wasn’t at all in the manner of a disheartened applicant for work that she pushed open the glass door with "Gibbons.  Modes.” painted on it, and stepped inside.

A bell had rung somewhere in the distance as she opened the door, and there was no one in the room as she entered it.  But she hadn’t much time to look around—­only long enough to get the impression that the place was somehow overflowing with hats—­when another door opened, and a thin, gray-haired, tight little woman (she had a tight dress and tight hair, and her joints, when she moved, seemed to be tight, too) confronted her.  She was unmistakably Miss Gibbons and in that first glance, Rose liked her.  Her features were rather too big for her small face—­a big nose not finely made, a wide thin-lipped mouth, and a long chin—­and her eyes, looking very straight out through gold-rimmed spectacles, had a penetrating brightness about them that was a little formidable.  It was not what one would call a good-natured face.  But good-natured sentimentality was the last thing Rose was looking for.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.  Her voice was as tight and brisk as the rest of her.

“I’m looking for a job,” said Rose.

Miss Gibbons came a step closer and her bright look pierced a little more deeply.

“So!” she said.  “You’re the actress, are you?”

Rose smiled at that.  “I’m not a real actress,” she said, “but I’m who you mean.  I was a chorus-girl with that company that broke down here.”

“Why didn’t you go away when the rest of them did?” the milliner demanded.

“I decided I didn’t want to go on being a chorus-girl,” said Rose, “and I thought there was as good a chance of getting other work here as in Chicago.”

“That was a sort of fool idea, I guess, wasn’t it?” Miss Gibbons suggested.

“It seems so, up to now,” said Rose.  “I spent the morning on Main Street without having any luck.  I went to five places ...”

“Five?” questioned Miss Gibbons.  “I knew about Arthur Perkins and Sim Laidlaw and Tabby Parkes.  Who were the other two?”