When the idea did knock at the door of her mind hesitatingly as Peter junior used to knock at the dryad door, the Hands’ advertisement for help was the last of its kind in the papers.  The Hands needed more hands than any of the other stores.

When Win was just about to say to herself, “That’s the one thing I couldn’t do,” she remembered Miss Seeker’s words.  Miss Rolls ruled her father and mother socially.  Peter senior was allowed to show his nose in the place only about once a year.  Mrs. and Miss Rolls never bought a pin there.  Young Peter didn’t bother, but wanted to be a philanthropist.  In fact, you would, apparently, be far more likely to meet a member of the Rolls family in any other shop than their own.

Instead of saying that she could not, Win said:  “Why shouldn’t I?” She told herself that in a vast house of business which employed over two thousand salespeople she would be a needle in a haystack—­a needle with a number, not a name.  “I’ll go and ask for a place,” she answered her own question.

But almost she hoped that she would not succeed.  If she tried, failure would not be her fault.

CHAPTER VIII

NO. 2884

Morning and girl were gray with cold as Win hovered before the vast expanse of plate glass which made of Peter Rolls’s department store a crystal palace.  Customers would not be admitted for an hour, yet the lovely wax ladies and the thrilling wax men in the window world wore the air of never having stopped doing their life work since they were appointed to it.

But then they had a life work of the most charming description.  Winifred envied them.  It was indeed their business to make all men, women, and children who passed envy them enough to stop, enter the store, and purchase things to make real life as much as possible like life in the window world.

All the nicest things which could be done in the strenuous outside world could in a serene and silent way be done in window world.  And the lovely ladies and their thrilling men had not to hustle from one corner of the earth to another in order to find different amusements.

In one section of plate-glass existence beautiful girls were being dressed by their maids for a ball.  Some were almost ready to start.  Exquisite cloaks were being folded about their shoulders by fascinating French soubrettes with little lace caps like dabs of whipped cream.  Other willowy creatures were lazy enough to be still in filmy “princess” petticoats and long, weblike, silk corsets ensheathing their figures nearly to their knees.  A realistic dressing-table, a lace-canopied bed, and pale-blue curtains formed their background.  Instead of having to rush half across New York to the dance, it was apparently taking place next door, with only a thin partition as a wall.