However, the hammering only intensified her headache; she must get outside. So when the landlady arrived with her breakfast, Susannah inquired for the address of the nearest employment office. She dressed, and descended to the street. As always, of late, she had a shrinking as she stepped out into the open world of men and women. When she had controlled this, she moved with a curious apathy to the old, battered ground-floor office with yellow signs over its front windows, where girls found work at domestic service. Presently, she was registered, was sitting on a long bench with a row of women ranging from slatternly to cheaply smart. She scarcely observed them. That apathy was settling deeper about her spirits; her only sensation was her dull headache. Somehow, when she sat still it was not wholly an unpleasant headache. Then the voice of the sharp-faced woman at the desk in the corner called her name. It tore the veil, woke her as though from sleep. She rose, to face her first chance--a thin, severe woman with a mouth like a steel trap. This first chance furnished no opening, however; neither, as the morning wore away, did several other chances. The process of getting a second maid's job was at the same time more difficult and less difficult than she had thought. Susannah had forgotten that people always ask servants for references. She had supposed her carefully worked out explanation would cover that situation--that she had been a stenographer in Providence; that she had come to New York soon after the Armistice was signed, hoping for a bigger outlook; that the returning soldiers were snapping up all the jobs; that she had tried again and again for a position; that her money was fast going; that she had been advised to enter domestic service. Housekeepers from rich establishments and the mistresses of small ones interviewed her; but the lack of references laid an impassable barrier. In the afternoon, however, luck changed. A suburbanite from Jamaica, a round, grizzled, middle-aged woman, desperately in need of a second girl, cut through all the red-tape that had held the others up. "You're perfectly honest," she said meditatively, "about admitting you've had no experience, and you _look_ trustworthy." "I assure you, madam,"--Susannah was eager, but wary; not too eager. She even laughed a little--"I am honest--so honest that it hurts." "The only thing is," her interlocutor went on hesitatingly; "you must pardon me for putting it so bluntly; but we might as well be open with each other. I'm afraid you'll feel a little above your position." "Well," Susannah responded honestly, "to be straightforward with _you_, I suppose I shall. But I give you my word, I'll never _show_ it. And that's the only thing that counts, isn't it?" The woman smiled. "I must confess I like you," she burst out impulsively. "But how am I going to know that you're--all right?"