Dialogue.

~ Jobs dont grow on trees, the principal of Belmont Secretarial Collage was fond of saying. Miss Price: Be positive. Now you go out into the world and win it! I have every confidence in you. ** When she came to the last student, however, her confidence suddeny evaporated. She looked at Lucy Beck, and sighed. **express Miss Price: Good luck my dear. **Lucy Beck looks to Miss Price.** express ~ Lucy Beck was young and small and mouse-colored, easily overlooked. She had a lonely O level and a typing speed that would make a tortoise laugh. Lucy Beck: Whoever will want to employ me? ~ Miss Price had been at a loss to answer. Lucy wanted a job badly. More than anyone, more than anything. She wanted a job. She was tired of being poor. She was fed up with macaroni cheese and baked beans. She was sick of second-hand clothes. Her mother wouls say, Mother: We are jumble sailors on the rough sea of life. **Lucy Beck stares ** express ~ Lucy loves her mother, but could not help wishing she would sometimes lose her tamper. Shout. Scream. Throw saucepans at the spinning, grinning head of Uncle Bert. Lucy Beck: If I get a job, Im getting out. Hes not drinking up my pay packet, thats for sure. ~ If she gets a job.... Trouble was that there were hundreds after every vacancy, brighter than Lucy, better qualified than Lucy, wearing strings of O levels round their necks like pearls. Lucy Beck: Who in their right minds will choose me? (while walking) ~