Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep anyway, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing anything, what was there one could do?
There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of drifting, she'd come to a resolution.
She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay, for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful company file away.
She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS
Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the shrubbery.
Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one eventually; before night, this was to say.