th 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?"

Rose couldn't enlighten her. She'd forgotten their names.

"I've had work offered to me," she went on, "or at least suggested. Mr.
Culver at the hotel told me of a moving-picture place ..."

"Where you could sit in that glass cage of Al Zeider's and sell
tickets?" Miss Gibbons broke in. "Why didn't you take it?"

"I told Mr. Culver," said Rose, "that I'd already walked th