Violet, in a word, was put upon the street. She was told that she could have her few possessions when she called for them, but she was given neither the Rivington Street recommendation nor a new one. She had received no leisure to see her friends of the tenement or the settlement during the days of her service, and she could not bring herself to seek them now that the black bird had again perched upon her forlorn banner. For half an hour she wandered aimlessly through the quieter streets; for another half-hour she endeavored to gather her courage. It was three o'clock in the afternoon before, desperate, she had inquired of a policeman for the whereabouts of an employment-agency, had found the grimy place, passed through the gloomy room with lines of toil-worn slatterns seated along its walls, and stated, in hesitant accents, her mission to the fat and frowzy woman in charge at a littered desk in the room beyond. That woman--she had a steady, calculating eye--looked at her victim with a curious appraisement. "What experience?" she asked. "Very little," admitted Violet. "Well are you----" The woman's voice dropped to the tone of discretion.--"Are you particular?" "Why no," said Violet sadly, "I ain't particular, so as it's quiet." The mistress smiled sagely. "We can fix that all right," said she. But she said it so knowingly that Violet found herself hurriedly adding: "An' so long as it's decent." That it was well she had supplemented her preceding speech, she at once perceived by the change that came over the woman's face. "Oh!" said the woman in a tone at once uninterested. "Well, have you any reference?" "No. You see----" "Never mind why. If we get you a job, some of the girls have plenty, an' we can lend you one of theirs. Go out an' sit down an' we'll see what happens." Violet returned to the dark front room and took a shrinking seat in a corner among the other applicants: two lines of pasty-faced, ungainly, and not over-cleanly women. She picked up a tattered paper, dated the preceding day, and tried to read it. She saw that the primary election had been held and that Wesley Dyker had secured one of the nominations for magistrate; but she was tired and disgusted and pursued the print no farther, listening, instead, to the babble of gossip that was going on about her.