"Well, Mrs. Smith, what skills do you have?" the gray-haired woman asked, impatiently tapping her ballpoint against the gray metal desktop.

"I… I…" Sandi began, then paused in despair as she fished through her mind for some citable accomplishment. Verne had always praised her cooking… and she'd done a lot of babysitting during high school… and she could knit and crochet… and she'd gotten straight A's in English, though she'd failed Algebra… Somehow, though, none of these attributes seemed the sort of thing that would interest this unfriendly woman.

"I… I," she tried again, "I can cook…"

"If you wanted a job as a domestic," the woman interrupted, glancing at her watch, "you ought to have gone to an agency that deals in that."

"Oh no!" Sandi exclaimed, her cheeks flushing redder than ever. "I… I don't think I want to be a maid."

Maids didn't make enough money to pay for Verne's operation, and she knew that her proud husband would be ashamed to have her cleaning someone else's home. He'd probably be resentful at the fact she was seeking any job at all, for he'd always insisted that no wife of his was going to work.

Catching the note of hysteria in the girl's voice, the frozen-faced employment bureau worker glanced up at her for the first time. The applicant didn't look a day over eighteen, though she was certainly pretty enough… somehow she just didn't look like the type to be a waitress in a nightclub, which was just about the only type of unskilled job the agency had listed at the moment.

"Unfortunately, there are no vacancies at any of the groceries or department stores here in Brunrocke," she said, riffling through a stack of file cards containing job listings. "But I do have something for a nightclub waitress at the Pioneer Bar and Steak House just out of town, down by the new expressway. It's well-paid, but naturally it involves night work…"