cule warned and
stiffened Sally. They did not know her. She would have to prove her
qualities. She then concentrated upon Miss Summers, watching how she
turned, how she smiled and frowned, and how she explained what had to be
done to each girl who was receiving new work. Miss Summers was a short
stout woman with cat's eyes and a long nose. She licked her lips like a
cat. She was inconsistent and short-tempered; but Sally afterwards found
that while she was extraordinarily vain she was rarely unkind. But in
general she was severe, because severity was the only course to pursue
with these chattering girls, who were full of scratches and jealousies,
and who would have taken advantage of weakness with rapid
unscrupulousness. So the little stout woman, feline and easily
exasperated, was a good person to control the room. Her kindness might
be part of her vanity, but it was not assumed. She loved her work, and
she was always glad to praise good work from the girls, and to encourage
it by favouritism to good workers. It was not the pretty ones or the sly
ones who were the favourites. It was the workers. Following each girl
with her eye, Sally could not observe that at the beginning; but it did
not take her long to add it to her now formidable collection of facts.

When at last Sally was called to Miss Summers's side, and questioned,
she walked the length of the room feeling as though her legs had no
joints, and as though her shoulders were fixed. There were only eleven
girls in the room besides herself, but they were all looking at her. And
when she stood before Miss Summers in her little black dress she looked
so slight, with her slim body and thin pale face, that several of the
girls went on with their work again immediately, having lost interest in
her. Sally, confronted by Miss Summers's cat-like eyes, which were a
gooseberry green, twisted her fingers, and blurted out:

"I'm sorry, I got no pinafore. I didn't know I had to have one."

She was relieved when Miss Summers smiled and licked her lips.

"Well, let's make you one for a start-off. Shall we?"

Sally could have fallen down, so astonished was she at this retort.
Still she blurted further:

"I got no money for the material."

Again Miss Summers smiled. She might almost have given a purr. She
rubbed her cold nose with the back of her hand, like a cat washing its
face.

"That's all right," she said. "We'll find some stuff. It can come off
your wages. I want to