Since she had no white dress or white shoes, Marcia asked Papa to buy them, a request that enraged him. He had just paid his taxes, he said, and if he bought for one he would have to buy for all three. Business was poor, now that these young men left town as soon as they got a girl in trouble instead of marrying her and buying furniture. As for the undertaking end, folks were all going to some new quack doctor in town and getting cured, instead of patronizing old Doc Franks, who knew his business. Besides, it would take two or three dollars for carfare and to spend the day in Lesterville, so he didn’t see that ten dollars would be any profit supposing she did get it, which wasn’t likely. It was a terrible blow to Marcia. Even Lena was generously indignant, but in making her complaint to Papa she did not improve matters by stating that they all needed white shoes and stockings anyway, and she thought she’d better accompany Marcia on this important mission. She explained that she would be in the contest herself, since she spoke every bit as well as Marcia, but for the fact that her teacher was so dumb she couldn’t make the students remember anything, so that Lena had broken down in the middle of her piece. Papa scowled over these supplications, and was definitely set against it when his wife called out that if he was going to buy white things for the girls he would have to pay the laundry bill, and the laundryman had just been around for his last bill. So here was her great opportunity nipped in the bud by Papa himself, and Marcia made up her mind to run away. She would somehow find a way to enter the competition and get the cash prize, so that she could live comfortably in some distant city until she got work. Other girls her age worked, and it must be a fine thing to have dollar bills in your pocket and no one to tell you how to spend them. It seemed to her, on a judicious study of herself in the mirror, that she would look about sixteen with her braids wound around her head and high heels; wearing glasses might help too. She was certain she knew enough to teach school, knowing more than any grown person she had ever met so far, if people would only give her a chance to tell it. David Gross recommended that she go straight to his father in Washington, who would employ her at once, but Marcia said she didn’t want to go to anybody’s parents, as parents were bound to cause trouble, no matter what you did. She could address envelopes anyway, the way they advertised in the papers, or she could sell magazine subscriptions and make all kinds of money. She hinted to Mrs. Friend that she was contemplating taking a position. Mrs. Friend wanted to know what sort of position. Marcia said she had thought of being an amanuensis to a famous author or else a companion to a wealthy old lady, traveling abroad and bringing her wraps on deck when the evenings were too cool. Mrs. Friend gave her a quarter to copy some letters, and Marcia put this in a special sachet bag toward her carfare to Lesterville. To leave no stone unturned in the way of future career in case she didn’t get the ten dollars, Marcia also copied drawings in magazines which said, “Copy this cartoon and win a free scholarship to the International Cartoonists’ Institute in St. Louis, jobs to graduates guaranteed.” This took a lot of paper, in fact almost the whole quarter’s worth, since so much erasing wore holes in the drawing, and Florrie, usually slavishly optimistic about Marcia’s genius thought so many smudges might count against her.