So the aunt cut and fitted before she went off for the day, and Elizabeth
was ordered to sew while she was gone. The grandmother presided at the
rattling old sewing-machine, and in two or three days Elizabeth was
pronounced to be fixed up enough to do for the present till she could
earn some new clothes. With her fine hair snarled into a cushion and
puffed out into an enormous pompadour that did not suit her face in the
least, and with an old hat and jacket of Lizzie's which did not become her
nor fit her exactly, she started out to make her way in the world as a
saleswoman. Lizzie had already secured her a place if she suited.
The store was a maze of wonder to the girl from the mountains--so many
bright, bewildering things, ribbons and tin pans, glassware and toys,
cheap jewelry and candies. She looked about with the dazed eyes of a
creature from another world.
But the manager looked upon her with eyes of favor. He saw that her eyes
were bright and keen. He was used to judging faces. He saw that she was as
yet unspoiled, with a face of refinement far beyond the general run of the
girls who applied to him for positions. And he was not beyond a friendly
flirtation with a pretty new girl himself; so she was engaged at once, and
put on duty at the notion-counter.
The girls flocked around her during the intervals of custom. Lizzie had
told of her cousin's long ride, embellished, wherever her knowledge
failed, by her extremely wild notions of Western life.
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