affected by the remarkable displays of trinkets, dress goods,
stationery, and jewelry. Each separate counter was a show place
of dazzling interest and attraction. She could not help feeling
the claim of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and
yet she did not stop. There was nothing there which she could
not have used--nothing which she did not long to own. The dainty
slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and
petticoats, the laces, ribbons, hair-combs, purses, all touched
her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not
any of these things were in the range of her purchase. She was a
work-seeker, an outcast without employment, one whom the average
employee could tell at a glance was poor and in need of a
situation.

It must not be thought that any one could have mistaken her for a
nervous, sensitive, high-strung nature, cast unduly upon a cold,
calculating, and unpoetic world. Such certainly she was not. But
women are peculiarly sensitive to their adornment.

Not only did Carrie feel the drag of desire for all which was new
and pleasing in apparel for women, but she noticed too, with a
touch at the heart, the fine ladies who elbowed and ignored her,
brushing past in utter disregard of her presence, themselves
eagerly enlisted in the materials which the store contained.
Carrie was not familiar with the appearance of her more fortunate
sisters of the city. Neither had she before known the nature and
appearance of the shop girls with whom she now compared poorly.
They were pretty in the main, some even handsome, with an air of
independence and indifference which added, in the case of the
more favoured, a certain piquancy. Their clothes were neat, in