had agreed it was best to walk, that morning at least, to see if
she could do it every day--sixty cents a week for car fare being
quite an item under the circumstances.

"I'll tell you how it goes to-night," said Carrie.

Once in the sunlit street, with labourers tramping by in either
direction, the horse-cars passing crowded to the rails with the
small clerks and floor help in the great wholesale houses, and
men and women generally coming out of doors and passing about the
neighbourhood, Carrie felt slightly reassured. In the sunshine
of the morning, beneath the wide, blue heavens, with a fresh wind
astir, what fears, except the most desperate, can find a
harbourage? In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day,
fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there
is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death.

Carrie went straight forward until she crossed the river, and
then turned into Fifth Avenue. The thoroughfare, in this part,
was like a walled canon of brown stone and dark red brick. The
big windows looked shiny and clean. Trucks were rumbling in
increasing numbers; men and women, girls and boys were moving
onward in all directions. She met girls of her own age, who
looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence. She
wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of
knowing much in order to do anything in it at all. Dread at her
own inefficiency crept upon her. She would not know how, she
would not be quick enough. Had not all the other places refused
her because she did not know something or other? She would be
scolded, abused, ignominiously discharged.