Minnie's flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then beingcalled, was in a part of West Van Buren Street inhabited by families oflabourers and clerks, men who had come, and were still coming, with therush of population pouring in at the rate of 50,000 a year. It was onthe third floor, the front windows looking down into the street, where,at night, the lights of grocery stores were shining and children wereplaying. To Carrie, the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars,as they tinkled in and out of hearing, was as pleasing as it was novel.She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought her into the frontroom, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, the murmur of the vastcity which stretched for miles and miles in every direction.

Mrs. Hanson, after the first greetings were over, gave Carrie the babyand proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a few questions and satdown to read the evening paper. He was a silent man, American born, of aSwede father, and now employed as a cleaner of refrigerator cars at thestock-yards. To him the presence or absence of his wife's sister was amatter of indifference. Her personal appearance did not affect him oneway or the other. His one observation to the point was concerning thechances of work in Chicago.

"It's a big place," he said. "You can get in somewhere in a few days.Everybody does."

It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to get work andpay her board. He was of a clean, saving disposition, and had alreadypaid a number of monthly instalments on two lots far out on the WestSide. His ambition was some day to build a house on them.

In the interval which marked the preparation of the meal Carrie foundtime to study the flat. She had some slight gift of observation and thatsense, so rich in every woman--intuition.

She felt the drag of a lean and narrow life. The walls of the rooms werediscordantly papered. The floors were covered with matting and the halllaid with a thin rag carpet. One could see that the furniture was ofthat poor, hurriedly patched together quality sold by the instalmenthouses.

She sat with Minnie, in the kitchen, holding the baby until it began tocry. Then she walked and sang to it, until Hanson, disturbed in hisreading, came and took it. A pleasant side to his nature came out here.He was patient. One could see that he was very much wrapped up in hisoffspring.

"Now, now," he said, walking. "There, there," and there was a certainSwedish accent noticeable in his voice.

"You'll want to see the city first, won't you?" said Minnie, when theywere eating. "Well, we'll go out Sunday and see Lincoln Park."

Carrie noticed that Hanson had said nothing to this. He seemed to bethinking of something else.

"Well," she said, "I think I'll look around to-morrow. I've got Fridayand Saturday, and it won't be any trouble. Which way is the businesspart?"

Minnie began to explain, but her husband took this part of theconversation to himself.

"It's that way," he said, pointing east. "That's east." Then he went offinto the longest speech he had yet indulged in, concerning the lay ofChicago. "You'd better look in those big manufacturing houses alongFranklin Street and just the other side of the river," he concluded."Lots of girls work there. You could get home easy, too. It isn't veryfar."

Carrie nodded and asked her sister about the neighbourhood. The lattertalked in a subdued tone, telling the little she knew about it, whileHanson concerned himself with the baby. Finally he jumped up and handedthe child to his wife.

"I've got to get up early in the morning, so I'll go to bed," and off hewent, disappearing into the dark little bedroom off the hall, for thenight.

"He works way down at the stock-yards," explained Minnie, "so he's gotto get up at half-past five."

"What time do you get up to get breakfast?" asked Carrie.

"At about twenty minutes of five."

Together they finished the labour of the day, Carrie washing the disheswhile Minnie undressed the baby and put it to bed. Minnie's manner wasone of trained industry, and Carrie could see that it was a steady roundof toil with her.

She began to see that her relations with Drouet would have to beabandoned. He could not come here. She read from the manner of Hanson,in the subdued air of Minnie, and, indeed, the whole atmosphere of theflat, a settled opposition to anything save a conservative round oftoil. If Hanson sat every evening in the front room and read his paper,if he went to bed at nine, and Minnie a little later, what would theyexpect of her? She saw that she would first need to get work andestablish herself on a paying basis before she could think of havingcompany of any sort. Her little flirtation with Drouet seemed now anextraordinary thing.

"No," she said to herself, "he can't come here."

She asked Minnie for ink and paper, which were upon the mantel in thedining-room, and when the latter had gone to bed at ten, got outDrouet's card and wrote him.

"I cannot have you call on me here. You will have to wait until you hearfrom me again. My sister's place is so small."

She troubled herself over what else to put in the letter. She wanted tomake some reference to their relations upon the train, but was tootimid. She concluded by thanking him for his kindness in a crude way,then puzzled over the formality of signing her name, and finally decidedupon the severe, winding up with a "Very truly," which she subsequentlychanged to "Sincerely." She sealed and addressed the letter, and goingin the front room, the alcove of which contained her bed, drew the onesmall rocking-chair up to the open window, and sat looking out upon thenight and streets in silent wonder. Finally, wearied by her ownreflections, she began to grow dull in her chair, and feeling the needof sleep, arranged her clothing for the night and went to bed.

When she awoke at eight the next morning, Hanson had gone. Her sisterwas busy in the dining-room, which was also the sitting-room, sewing.She worked, after dressing, to arrange a little breakfast for herself,and then advised with Minnie as to which way to look. The latter hadchanged considerably since Carrie had seen her. She was now a thin,though rugged, woman of twenty-seven, with ideas of life coloured by herhusband's, and fast hardening into narrower conceptions of pleasure andduty than had ever been hers in a thoroughly circumscribed youth. Shehad invited Carrie, not because she longed for her presence, but becausethe latter was dissatisfied at home, and could probably get work and payher board here. She was pleased to see her in a way, but reflected herhusband's point of view in the matter of work. Anything was good enoughso long as it paid--say, five dollars a week to begin with. A shop girlwas the destiny prefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of thegreat shops and do well enough until--well, until something happened.Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure on promotion.They did not exactly count on marriage. Things would go on, though, in adim kind of way until the better thing would eventuate, and Carrie wouldbe rewarded for coming and toiling in the city. It was under suchauspicious circumstances that she started out this morning to look forwork.

Before following her in her round of seeking, let us look at the spherein which her future was to lie. In 1889 Chicago had the peculiarqualifications of growth which made such adventuresome pilgrimages evenon the part of young girls plausible. Its many and growing commercialopportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet,drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and thehopeless--those who had their fortune yet to make and those whosefortunes and affairs had reached a disastrous climax elsewhere. It was acity of over 500,000, with the ambition, the daring, the activity of ametropolis of a million. Its streets and houses were already scatteredover an area of seventy-five square miles. Its population was not somuch thriving upon established commerce as upon the industries whichprepared for the arrival of others. The sound of the hammer engaged uponthe erection of new structures was everywhere heard. Great industrieswere moving in. The huge railroad corporations which had long beforerecognised the prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts ofland for transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had beenextended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth.The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regionswhere, perhaps, one solitary house stood out alone--a pioneer of thepopulous ways to be. There were regions open to the sweeping winds andrain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinkinglines of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extendedout, passing here a house, and there a store, at far intervals,eventually ending on the open prairie.

In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district, towhich the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was acharacteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by othercities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individualbuildings. The presence of ample ground made this possible. It gave animposing appearance to most of the wholesale houses, whose offices wereupon the ground floor and in plain view of the street. The large platesof window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use, andgave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and prosperous look.The casual wanderer could see as he passed a polished array of officefixtures, much frosted glass, clerks hard at work, and genteel businessmen in "nobby" suits and clean linen lounging about or sitting ingroups. Polished brass or nickel signs at the square stone entrancesannounced the firm and the nature of the business in rather neat andreserved terms. The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high andmighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and tomake the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.

Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She walkedeast along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance,until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, andfinally verged upon the river. She walked bravely forward, led by anhonest desire to find employment and delayed at every step by theinterest of the unfolding scene, and a sense of helplessness amid somuch evidence of power and force which she did not understand. Thesevast buildings, what were they? These strange energies and hugeinterests, for what purposes were they there? She could have understoodthe meaning of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carvinglittle pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of somehuge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks and flatcars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed overhead byimmense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost all significance inher little world.

It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array ofvessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the way,lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she could see thefigures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily about. Thegreat streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the vast offices,strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals of importance. Shecould only think of people connected with them as counting money,dressing magnificently, and riding in carriages. What they dealt in, howthey laboured, to what end it all came, she had only the vaguestconception. It was all wonderful, all vast, all far removed, and shesank in spirit inwardly and fluttered feebly at the heart as she thoughtof entering any one of these mighty concerns and asking for something todo--something that she could do--anything.