We want girls occasionally." When she had gotten safely into the street, she could scarcely restrain the tears.

It was not so much the particular rebuff which she had just experienced, but the whole abashing trend of the day.

She was tired and nervous.

She abandoned the thought of appealing to the other department stores and now wandered on, feeling a certain safety and relief in mingling with the crowd.
In her indifferent wandering she turned into Jackson Street, not far from the river, and was keeping her way along the south side of that imposing thoroughfare, when a piece of wrapping paper, written on with marking ink and tacked up on the door, attracted her attention.

It read, "Girls wanted--wrappers & stitchers." She hesitated a moment, then entered.
The firm of Speigelheim & Co., makers of boys' caps, occupied one floor of the building, fifty feet in width and some eighty feet in depth.
It was a place rather dingily lighted, the darkest portions having incandescent lights, filled with machines and work benches.