had a wide, well paved street
lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round
hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over
them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the
Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the
grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the
shrubbery.

Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and
then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should
find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one
eventually; before night, this was to say.

Her confidence sprang from two sources: one, that though inexperienced
she knew she was intelligent, willing and attractive. People, she found,
were apt to be disposed in her favor. The other source of her confidence
was that she wasn't looking for much. She would take, for the present,
anything that offered. Because any sort of work, even menial work, would
be a relief after that nightmare tour. The weeks since she had left
Chicago, especially the last two or three of them, seemed unreal, and
the incidents of them as if they couldn't have happened. Anything that
didn't involve associations with that detestable company, and the
unspeakable piece they had played, would seem--well, almost heavenly. If
she couldn't get a job in a store, she'd go and be a waitress at the
hotel. She could make a pretty good waitress, she thought.

But her confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the
streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about
herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other
directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the
blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark
Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of
performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours,
both in the theatrical part of the loop and in the district where she
lived, without any molestation whatever. The small towns that she had
visited with the company had been different of course. She'd been stared
at in the streets and not infrequently addressed. She'd forgiven that
because she was a member of the company. It was natural enough for
people to stare at a girl they'd paid to see on the stage the night
before, or were going to see to-night.

Now she discovered that the comp