The man took the letter, which was written on Higgledy-Piggledy paper and in Josie's best handwriting. In it the cleverness of Miss Sally Blossom was lauded to the skies. Josie blushed through her paint as he read it aloud.
"To think of my having the nerve to say all that about myself!" flashed through her mind. "But I bet it lands me my job."
It did. Since she was the first to apply she was given her choice of a field of operations and she chose Atlanta. She gave her address as 126 East Centre and made an engagement with the man to see him the next day to receive instructions and literature concerning her wares. Samples were to be sent to her at Atlanta.
"Now, having given my address as 126 East Centre, I must hurry over there and apply for board," said Josie to herself as she left the hotel.
The group gathered on the porch at 126 East Centre was the same as it had been on the day that Josie had tracked the elusive Dink to her lair. The young men were tilted back in their chairs at the same angle, and the young women were equally taken up with their ear puffs and frizzes. The clientele of 126 was an ever-changing one, but the class characteristics were stationary.
Josie tripped up the steps, assuming a kind of nonchalance as she calmly viewed the loafing boarders. They in turn gazed at her, some with interest and some with open disdain. With the boarders at 126 one must prove herself down to their standards before being accepted into their social order.
"Stuck up!" declared one young woman—the one with the most extreme ear puffs of all, the shortest skirt and the highest heels.
"Oh, I don't know," objected a man, removing the toothpick from his mouth and his gaudily socked feet from the railing. "I think she's some cutey."
A snicker of derision answered this sally.
"With them unstylish low heels? I guess you ain't got below her henna bob," snapped the girl, arching her instep and poking out her near-silk clad foot with its high-heeled, dirty, white kid pump.