Page:The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living (1909).djvu/98

 and utilize out-of-date clothes for her in that very artistic fashion!

The girl hesitated a moment, then frankly asked for a chance to do the work, explaining her financial condition. The one-time buyer of ceramics gladly accepted her services as a renovator, cleaner and general utility sewer.

For one whole year that girl did nothing but make old frocks into new ones. There was nothing about cleaning, turning and pressing that she did not master. But all the time she cherished another ambition. At the end of the year she entered the workroom of a firm noted as makers of women's shirt-waists and blouses. She studied their methods, and finally fared forth a specialist in shirt-waist and lingerie blouses. To-day she has a business so thriving that she never gives a thought to her one-time ambition as a painter of china.

From the West Indies came another young woman with rosy visions of learning dressmaking and opening an establishment of her own. She found herself an apprentice in a huge workroom surrounded by girls who had no ambition beyond half-holidays and Sunday at Coney Island. They told her there was no chance to rise. If a forewoman saw you were clever she purposely kept you back, lest you become her rival.

The girl could not endure this. She needed