upon the sixth floor of a Broadway building. In the hairdressing
parlor half the long rows of chairs reached out empty arms except
during the rush hours of afternoon; even then impatient patrons merely
sprinkled the room with little oases of activity while the girls
busied themselves with tidying shelves already immaculate, and
prinking before the mirrors whenever they dared. An air of uncertainty
pervaded the place, swept in by the rumor that the shop was going to
cut down its force of operators. No one knew, of course, the exact
truth of the matter, but that made it all the worse.

"'For one shall be taken and the other left,'" a blonde girl quoted
into a dismal little group at the window that looked out over the
city. "Has any one heard any more about it?"

"Rumley has been checking up the appointment lists, all morning," a
short, fat girl with henna-auburn hair piled high on her head reported
cheerfully. "Of course, you could never get a word out of _her_--but
I know what she is up to. The girls that have the most steady patrons
will stay, of course. I'm certainly glad I kidded that old widow into
thinking she's puhfectly stunning with her hair hennaed. She don't
trust anybody but me to touch it up. And she's good for a scalp and
facial and manicure every week of her life, besides getting her hair
dressed every Saturday anyway, and sometimes oftener when she's going
out. And she _always_ has a marcelle after a shampoo. She'd quit
coming if I left--she told me so last week. She thinks I'm _there_ on
massages. And then I've got sevrul others that ask for me regular as
they come in. You know that big, fat--"

"Miss Rose forward," the foreman's crisp, businesslike voice
interrupted.