yway. She tugged it into her room after she had lighted the gas.

You might have seen, if you had been there to see, just a momentary
hesitation after she'd got her trunk key out of her purse before she
unlocked it. It was a sort of Jack-in-the-box, that trunk. Would the
emotions with which she'd packed it, spring out and clutch her as she
released the hasp? The saving factor in the situation was that it was a
quarter past seven. In fifteen minutes she must be back at North End
Hall, getting ready to go to work at her job. Suppose she hadn't found a
job this afternoon? The thought turned her giddy.

She plunged into her trunk, rummaged out a middy-blouse, a pair of black
silk bloomers, and her gymnasium sneakers, rolled them all together in a
bundle, got into her rubbers and her ulster again, and--I'm afraid there
is no other word for it--fled.

She was one of the first of the chorus to reach the hail and she had
nearly finished putting on her working clothes before the rest of them
came pelting in. But she didn't get out quickly enough to miss the
sensation that was exciting them all--the news that Grant had been
dropped. A few of them were indignant; the rest merely curious. The
indignant ones allowed themselves a license in the expression of this
feeling that positively staggered Rose; made use in a quite
matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man
would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman. She
made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who
never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction
between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and
those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few
minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some
foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency.

One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn't finally been
dropped; it was absurd that she should be. She was one of the most
popular chorus-girls in Chicago. The director was merely trying to scare
her into doing better work for him. She'd come back, all right. She had
reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite
the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine. Her
"friend," it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson. Grant
would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to
induce Galbraith to take h