I hate to think of those nightmare days that followed. It seemed to me that a hundred thousand girls answered every advertisement. I stood in line with hundreds of them outside offices and shops and factories and all sorts of places. I stood or sat (when I could get a seat) in crowded outer offices with scores of other girls, all hungrily hoping for the "job" which only one of us could have.

Then I began to go from office to office, selecting a building, and going through it from the top to the bottom floor. Sometimes I got beyond the appraising office boys and clerks of outer offices, and sometimes I was turned away at the door.

I have known what it is to be pitied, chaffed, insulted, "jollied"; I have had coarse or delicate compliments paid me; I have been cursed at and ordered to "clear out—" oh, all the crucifying experiences that only a girl who looks hard for work knows!

I've had a fat broker tell me that a girl like me didn't need to work; I've had a pious-looking hypocrite chuck me under the chin, out of sight of his clerks in the outer offices. I've had a man make me a cold business proposition of ten dollars a week for my services as stenographer and type-writer, and ten dollars a week for my services as something else. I've had men brutally touch me, and when I have resented it, I have seen them spit across the room in my direction, and some have cursed me.

And I have had men slip into my hand the price of a meal, and then apologize when they saw they had merely hurt me.

When the day was done, I've wearily climbed aboard crowded cars and taken my stand, packed between a score of men and women, or clung to straps or doors, and I have envied those other people on the car, because I felt that most of them were returning from work, while I was looking for it.

And then I've gone back to my room in the Y. W. C. A., hurrying to get there before the chattering, questioning Estelle, and counted over my ever-diminishing hundred dollars, and lain down upon my bed, feverishly to think ever and only of him! Oh, how far, far away now he always seemed from me!

Sometimes, if I came in early enough, and if I were not too desperately tired, I would write things. Odds and ends—what did I not write? Wisps of thoughts, passionate little poems that could not bear analysis; and then one day I wrote a little story of my mother's land. I had never been there, and yet I wrote easily of that quaint, far country, and of that wandering troupe of jugglers and tight-rope dancers of which my own mother had been one.

A week passed away, and still I had found no work. What was worse, I had no way of learning type-writing, even with the machine before me; for Estelle, despite her promises, went out every night with Albert. She had merely shown me one morning how to put the paper on and move the carriage back and forth. I used to sit before that type-writer and peck at the type, but my words ran into one another, and sometimes the letters were jumbled together.

I now knew a few of the girls in the house to speak to slightly, but I hesitated to ask any of them to show me something that perhaps I ought to pay to learn; for I did not want to spend the money for that. So I waited for Estelle to keep her promise.

Sometimes I would approach a group of girls, with the intention of asking one of them to come with me up to my room, and then when she was there, ask her about the type-writer; but the girls at the Y. W. C. A. were always occupied in one way or another in the evening, and a great many of them, like myself, were looking for work.

They used to cluster together in the lower halls and reading-room and talk over their experiences. Snorts of indignation, peals of laughter, strenuous words of advice—all these came in a stream from the girls. You'd hear one girl tell an experience, and another would say, "I tell you what I'd have done: I'd have slapped him in the face!" Or again, a girl would say, "I just gave him one look that petrified him." From all of which I gathered that my own experiences while looking for work were common ones. Alas! most of us had passed the stage where we "smacked" or "slapped" a man in the face or "petrified" him with a stare when he insulted us. What was the use? I had got so that I would take a nasty proposition from a man with a shrug and a smile, and walk out gamely.

I dare say there are people who cannot believe men are so base. Well, we girls who work see them at their worst, remember, and sometimes we see them at their best. There are men so fine and great in the business world that they compensate for all the contemptible wolves who prey upon creatures weaker and poorer than they are.

I did not have time in those days to notice much that happened in the house, and yet small riots and strikes were on all sides of us. Girls were protesting about this or that. I remember one of the chief grievances was having to attend certain amateur theatrical performances given by patronesses of the association. We poor girls were obliged to sit through these abortive efforts at amusing us. Most of us, as Estelle said, could have "put it all over" these alleged actors. Then, not all of the girls cared to attend the religious services and prayer meetings. It was a real hardship to be obliged to sit through these when one would have much preferred to remain in one's room. The ten-o'clock rule was the hardest of all. At that hour all lights went out. We were supposed to be in bed unless we had permission to remain out later. Vehement protests against this rule were daily hurled at the powers that were, but in vain. The girls asserted that as there were no private parlors in which to see their company, they were obliged to go out, and it was cruel to make it obligatory to be in so early.

So, you see, pleasant as in many ways the association was, it had its drawbacks. Even I, who was charmed with the place, and grateful for the immediate shelter it gave me, revolted after I had been working some time.

One day a statue of General Logan was to be unveiled opposite our place, and a great parade was to mark the occasion. Naturally the windows of our house that faced the avenue were desirable and admirable places from which not only to see the parade, but to watch the unveiling exercises. Promptly the patrons and patronesses descended upon us, and our windows were demanded. We girls were told we would have to give up our rooms for that afternoon and go to the roof.

I'll tell you what one girl did. When the fine party that was to occupy her room knocked upon her door, she called, "Come in!" and when they entered, they found the young person in bed. She declined to get up.

Threats, coaxings, the titterings and explosive laughter of the association's "honored guests" (they were of both sexes) fell upon deaf ears. She declined to get up, and dared any one of them to force her up. She said she had paid for that room, and she, and no one else, was going to occupy it that day. That girl was I. I suppose I would have been put out of the place for that piece of unheard-of defiance but for the fact that one of the patronesses undertook to champion me. She said I was perfectly right, and as she was a most important patroness, I was not disturbed, though I received a severe lecture from Miss Secretary.

Taken on the whole, however, it was a good place. We had a fine gymnasium and even a room for dancing. There were always lectures of one kind or another, and if a girl desired, she could acquire a fair education.

At the end of my second week, and while I was still looking for a place, I made my first real girl friend and chum. I had noticed her in the dining-room, and she, so she said, had specially selected me for consideration. She called upon me one evening in my room. Of course she was pretty, else I am afraid I should not have been attracted to her. Pretty things hypnotize me. She was several years older than I, and was what men call a "stunning-looking" girl. She was tall, with a beautiful figure, which she always showed to advantage in handsome tailor-made suits. Her complexion was fair, and she had laughing blue eyes. She was the wittiest and prettiest and most distinguished-looking girl in the house. I forgot to describe her hair. It was lovely, shining, rippling hair, the color of "Kansas corn," as one of her admirers once phrased it.

Estelle was out that evening, and while I was forlornly picking at my type-writer, some one tapped at my door, and then Lolly—her name was Laura, but I always called her Lolly—put her head in.

She said:

"Anybody but yourself at home?" and when I said no, she came in, and locked the door behind her. She was in a pink dressing-gown so pretty that I could not take my eyes from it. I had never had a dressing-gown.

Lolly stretched herself out on my bed, brought forth a package of cigarettes, a thing absolutely forbidden in the place, offered me one, and lit and began to smoke one herself. To be polite, I took her cigarette and tried to smoke it; but she burst into merry laughter at my effort, because I blew out instead of drawing in. However, I did my best.

Of course, like girls, we chatted away about ourselves, and after I had told her all about myself, Lolly in turn told me her history.

It seems she was the daughter of a prominent Texas politician whose marriage to a stepmother of whom Lolly heartily disapproved had induced her to leave home. She was trying to make a "sort of a livelihood," she called it, as a reporter for the newspapers.

When she said this carelessly, I was so surprised and delighted that I jumped on the bed beside her, and in a breath I told her that that was the work I had done, and now wanted to do. She said that there "wasn't much to it," and that if she were I, she'd try to get something more practical and dependable. She said she had a job one day and none the next. At the present time she was on the Inter Ocean, and she had been assigned to "cover" the Y. W. C. A. (she called it "The Young Women's Cussed Association") and dig up some stories about the "inmates" and certain abuses of the officials. She said she'd have a fine "story" when she got through.

How I envied her for her work! Hoping she might help me secure a similar position, I read to her my latest story. She said it was "not bad," but still advised me to get a stenographer's place in preference. She said there were five thousand and ninety-nine positions for stenographers to one for women reporters, and that if I got a good place, I would find time to write a bit, anyway. In that way I'd get ahead even better than if I had some precarious post on a newspaper, as the space rates were excessively low. She said that she herself did not make enough to keep body and soul together, but that she had a small income from home. She said her present place was not worth that, and she blew out a puff of smoke from her pretty lips. Any day she expected that her "head would roll off," as she had been "falling down" badly on stories lately.

In her way Lolly was as slangy as Estelle, but there was a subtle difference between their slangs. Lolly was a lady. I do not care for the word, but gentlewoman somehow sounds affected here. Estelle was not. Yet Lolly was a cigarette fiend, and, according to her own wild tales, had had a most extraordinary career.

Lolly had the most charming smile. It was as sunny as a child's, and showed a row of the prettiest of teeth. She was impulsive, and yet at times exceedingly moody.

I told her I thought she was quite the prettiest girl in the place, whereupon she gave me a squeeze and said:

"What about yourself?"

Then she wanted to know what I did with myself all the time. I said:

"Why, I look for work all day."

"But at night?"

Oh, I just stayed in my room and tried to write or to practise on the type-writer.

"Pooh!" said Lolly, "you'll die of loneliness that way. Why don't you get a sweetheart?"

I suppose my face betrayed me, for she said:

"Got one already, have you?"

"No, indeed," I protested.

"Then why don't you get one?"

"You talk," I said, "as if sweethearts were to be picked up any day on the street."

"So they are, as far as that goes," said Lolly. "You just go down the avenue some night and see for yourself."

That really shocked me.

"If you mean make up to a strange man, I wouldn't do a thing like that, would you?"

"Oh, yes," said Lolly, "if I felt like it. As it is now, however, I have too many friends. I've got to cut some of them out. But when I first came here, I was so d—— lonely"—she used swear-words just like a man—"that I went out one night determined to speak to the first man who got on the car I took."

"Well?"

Lolly threw back her head and laughed, blowing her smoke upward as she did so.

"He was a winner from the word go, my dear. Most of the girls get acquainted with men that way. Try it yourself."

No, I said I wouldn't do that. It was too "common."

"Pooh!" said Lolly, "Lord knows I was brought up by book rule. I was the bell of D——, but now I'm just a working-girl. I've come down to brass tacks. What a fool I'd be to follow all the conventional laws that used to bind me. Then, too, I'm a Bohemian. Ever hear of that word?" she interrupted herself to ask.

I nodded.

Mama used to call papa that when she was angry with him.

"Well," said Lolly, "I'm the bona-fide Bohemian article. My family think I'm the limit. What do you think?"

"I think you are trying to shock me," I said.

"Well, have I?"

"No, not a bit."

"Then you're the only girl in the house I haven't," she said with relish. "You know, I'm in pretty bad here, a sore spot in the body politic. Out I'd go this blessed minute if it wasn't for the fact that they're all afraid of me—afraid I'll show 'em up scorchingly."

"Would you do that?" I asked.

"Watch me!" said Lolly, laughing.

The lights went out, and then she swore. She had to scramble about on the bed to find her cigarettes. When she was going out, she said:

"Oh, by the way, if you like, I'll give you a card to a fellow out in the stock-yards. You go out there to-morrow and see him. He may have something for you."

Have I, I wonder, in this first rough picture of Lolly done her an injustice? If so, I hasten to change the effect. Lolly was a true adventurer; I dare not say adventuress, for that has a nasty sound. I wonder why, when adventurer sounds all right. Though at heart she was pure gold, though her natural instincts were refined and sweet, she took a certain reckless pleasure in, as it were, dancing along through life with a mocking mask held ever before her. For instance, she took an almost diabolic delight in painting herself in black colors. She would drawl off one startling story after another about herself as with half-closed eyes, through the smoke, she watched my face to judge of the effect of her recital. Sometimes she would laugh heartily at the end of her confidences, and then again she would solemnly assert that every word was true.

The morning after her first visit she woke me up early and, although Estelle grumbled, came airily into our room and got into bed with me.

A queer sort of antagonism existed between Lolly and Estelle, which I never quite understood at the time, though perhaps I do now. Lolly, with her reckless, handsome stylishness and dash represented the finished product of what poor Estelle tried to be. To make a crude sort of comparison, since Estelle herself worked in a clothing house and used clothing-house figures of speech, it was as if Lolly were a fine imported model and Estelle the pathetic, home-made attempt at a copy. She had copied the outlines, but not the subtle little finishing touches. Lolly, moreover, was acutely, amusedly aware of this, and she took a wicked and heartless delight in teasing and gibing at Estelle with words fully as slangy as Estelle's own, but which fairly stung with their keenness and caustic wit.

I could understand why Estelle hated Lolly, but I never could understand Lolly's contempt for Estelle. She always dismissed her as "Trash, Nora, trash!"

So now Estelle turned over in bed and snorted loud and long as Lolly got into mine.

Lolly said:

"George! how the hoi-polloi do snore!"

Estelle lifted her head from the pillow, to show she was not sleeping, and, as she would have put it, "petrified" Lolly with one long, sneering, contemptuous look.

Lolly had come in, in fact, on an errand of mercy toward me, to whom she had taken a sudden fancy very much reciprocated by me. She said she wanted me to go out to the stock-yards as early as possible, as she understood this man she knew there wanted a stenographer right away. His name, she said, was Fred O'Brien, and she gave me a card which read, "Miss Laura Hope, the Inter Ocean." On the back she had written:

"Introducing Miss Nora Ascough."

I was delighted. It was like having another reference. I asked her about this Mr. O'Brien. She said, with a smile and significantly, that she had met him on a recent expedition to the yards in an inquiring mood for the Inter Ocean in regard to the pigs'-hair department, of which he was then manager.

"Pigs' hair!"

I had never heard of such a thing, and Lolly burst into one of her wildest peals of laughter, which made Estelle sit up savagely in bed.

"You'll be the death of me yet," said Lolly.

That was all the explanation she gave me, but all the way to the stock-yards, and as I was going through them, I kept wondering what on earth pigs' hair could be. I must say I did not look forward with any degree of delight to working in the pigs'-hair department.

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