"Most every place is temporary till they size you up. If you're what they want, they'll keep you on after the holidays, never fear. You may have to take less money to begin with than you get now, but it will be easier earned. Any old thing is better than Jake Meyer's joint, _I_ think." This hope carried Jean through the three ensuing days. The conditions at the cloak-factory were at no time better--in fact, once or twice, when it rained and the girls came with damp clothing, they were worse; but she omitted no more meals, and after the second day accustomed herself to the steady treadmill of the machine. At luncheon, Friday, Amy had news. "Come up to the store after you stop work to-night," she directed. "Beginning to-day, we keep open longer. Take the elevator to the fourth floor." "There's a place for me?" "I'm not saying that. I spoke to my friend, the floor-walker, again--he's in the toy department--and he told me to bring you round." Jean found the vast establishment easily. The difficulty would have been to miss it. Pushing her way through the holiday shoppers crowding the immense ground-floor, she wormed into an elevator, got out as Amy bade, and, after devious wanderings in a wonderful garden of millinery, came finally upon her friend's special province and Amy herself. Or was it Amy? She looked twice before deciding. It was not so much the costly garment, a thing of silks, embroideries, and laces, which effected the transformation,--Jean expected something of the kind,--as it was the actress in Amy herself, which impelled her to play the part the costume implied. With eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed, shoulders erect, she was not Amy Jeffries, cloak-model, but a child of luxury apparelled for the opera or the ball. "Did she buy it?" Jean asked, when, free at last, Amy perceived her waiting and came to her. Amy sighed dolefully. "Yes; it's gone," she said. "You can't imagine how I hate to lose it. It had come to seem like my very own." Jean could not conceive Amy in an occupation more congenial, and wished heartily that as enviable a fortune might fall to her. "It seems easy work," she said. "What do they require of a cloak-model?" "A thirty-six inch bust, at least, for a starter. Did I ever tell you that they call us by our bust measures? We never hear our own names. I'm Thirty-six; that big girl with the red hair is Thirty-eight; and so it goes. Then you must have good proportions and a stylish carriage, and be attractive generally," she added, naïvely regarding her trim reflection in the nearest pier-glass. At this point "Thirty-eight" approached, and Amy introduced her, saying:-- "My friend here thinks she'd like to be a cloak-model. 'Tisn't all roses, is it?" The red-haired girl gave the indulgent smile of experience.