The nature of these vast retail combinations, should they ever permanently disappear, will form an interesting chapter in the commercial history of our nation.  Such a flowering out of a modest trade principle the world had never witnessed up to that time.  They were along the line of the most effective retail organization, with hundreds of stores coordinated into one and laid out upon the most imposing and economic basis.  They were handsome, bustling, successful affairs, with a host of clerks and a swarm of patrons.  Carrie passed along the busy aisles, much affected by the remarkable displays of trinkets, dress goods, stationery, and jewelry.  Each separate counter was a show place of dazzling interest and attraction.

She could not help feeling the chain of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and yet she did not stop.  There was nothing there which she could not have used-nothing which she did not long to own.  The dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats, the laces, ribbons, hair-combs, purses, all touched her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not any of these things were in the range of her purchase.  She was a work-seeker, an outcast without employment, one whom the average employee could tell at a glance was poor and in need of a situation.

It must not be thought that any one could have mistaken her for a nervous, sensitive, high-strung nature, east unduly upon a cold, calculating, and un-poetic world.  Such certainly she was not.  But women are peculiarly sensitive to their adornment.

Not only did Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new and pleasing in apparel for women, but she noticed too, with a touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her, brushing past in utter disregard of her presence, themselves eagerly enlisted in the materials which the store contained.  Carrie was not familiar with the appearance of her more fortunate sister of the city.  Neither had she before known the nature and appearance of the shop girls with whom she now compared poorly.  They were pretty in the main, some even handsome, with an air of independence and indifference which added, in the case of the more favored, a certain piquancy.  Their clothes were neat, in many instances fine, and wherever she encountered the eye of one it was her individual shortcomings of dress and that shadow of manner which she though must hang about her and lighted in her heart.  She realized in a dim way how meant for women, and she longed for dress and beauty with a whole heart.

On the second floor were the managerial offices, to which, after some inquiry, she was now directed.  There she found other girls ahead of her, applicants like herself. but with more of that self-satisfied and independent air which experience of the city lends; girls who scrutinized her in a painful manner.  After a wait of perhaps three quarters of an hour, she was called in turn.