The next day was the end of our partnership. Alice, obeying her mother, returned to her home. I accompanied her to the train, and received as much advice as could be packed into fifteen minutes by a fast talker. Though candor forces me to admit that most of it flowed out of one ear as fast as it was driven into the other, a few pieces did reach my brain and so lodged in the meshes of my memory. One of these lodgments was an earnest request that I forsake the help-wanted column and confine myself to reputable employment agencies. And Alice emphasized reputable. Earlier in the winter, following Alice’s advice, I had tried an agency which made a specialty of placing college graduates. I had registered, paid my dollar, and been told they would communicate with me as soon as anything along my line turned up. Now, on my way back to the rooming-house, after watching Alice get aboard the train for Washington City, I called again at this agency and reminded them of my application. Much to my surprise, I learned that I was an unskilled worker in my own line. Because I had never been a proofreader, sat in an editorial chair, nor taught a class in story-writing I was unskilled. Neither my college degree nor the fact that I had published several novels amounted to a row of pins. H’m, I thought, why did you go to the trouble of changing your name and otherwise sailing under false colors? As an unskilled worker you are really in the class to which you belong. From this agency I went to a “placement bureau,” the annex of a semiphilanthropic organization whose specialty is “reduced gentlewomen.” Here the charge was fifty cents for registration. When it came my turn to be interviewed by the overdressed woman in charge, she earnestly advised me to take a secretarial course at a particular school. She gave me her personal card to the head of this school and assured me that she had more demands for graduates from this school than she could possibly fill that season. As I had overheard her give the same advice to three other women I was not very much impressed. However, as I had come there for advice I decided to see how far hers would take me. At the school I learned that the shortest course was for six months, and the lowest price was one hundred dollars. The head of the school smilingly informed me that as I might not have to study English a reduction, perhaps ten dollars, might be arranged for. Returning to the “placement bureau,” I applied to the same overdressed individual for part-time work that would give me my maintenance while I was studying to become a secretary. She gave me cards of introduction to the matron of two institutions. CHAPTER VIII ST. ROSE’S HOME FOR GIRLS