Jazz Baby: Billie stopped working at Rockingham Academy at the end of the spring term [1922] and took a job selling notions at Kline's Department Store downtown [Walnut St.]. She was able to buy clothes at a discount and was required to contribute to the rent at her mother's apartment.

Jazz Baby:  [after returning from Stephens College in the spring of 1923] She had hated working at Kline's Department Store before she left to go to Stephens College, but it was a place to start...She held the job only a few weeks...She then trained to be a telephone operator---a job she felt was demeaning....Then she tried The Jones Store for a few weeks before trying a men's shop, Rothschild's, again as a package wrapper. Emery, Bird, Thayer...paid her a trifle more than the other employers --- about $15 per week.

Jazz Baby: Jim Miller remembers seeing Billie numerous times waiting under the awnings...of Emery, Bird, Thayer for some date or other to pick her up for dinner or a night on the town. The awning space was so popular as a rendezvous that the kids dubbed it "Emery's Porch."