onfidence was with her a
sign of temporary ill-health. She magnificently recovered her natural
conceitedness. She was Sally.

In the evening she went home early, to her mother's interest and
pleasure; but there was nothing to do at home and the atmosphere was
insufferable. It drove her forth, and she walked in the twilight,
longing for Toby to be with her. He would not have understood all she
was thinking--he would angrily have hated most of it--but his company
would have distracted her mind and occupied her attention. She thought
of Toby at sea on this beautiful evening, with the stars pale in an opal
sky; and she could see him standing upon the deck of the "Florence
Drake" in his blue jersey without a hat, with the breeze playing on his
crisp hair and his brown face. A yearning for Toby filled her. Tears
started to her eyes. She loved him, she felt, more than she had ever
done: she needed him with her, not to understand her, but to brace her
with the support of his strong arms. Sally dried her eyes and blew her
nose. "Here!" she said to herself. "Stop it! I'm getting soppy!"

She presently passed the ugly building of a Board School, not the one
which she had attended, but one nearer her present home. Outside it, and
within the railings protecting the asphalted playground from the
footpath, was a notice-board upon which was pasted a bill advertising
the evening classes which would be held there during the Autumn Session.
Idly, Sally stopped to read down the list of subjects--and the first
that caught her eye, of course, was dressmaking. She gave a sniff. Funny
lot of girls would go to that. Girls trying to do Miss Jubb out of a
job. Sally glimpsed their efforts. She had seen girls in dresses which
they had made themselves. Poor mites! she thought. Paper patterns for
somebody twice their size, and bad calculations of the necessary
reductions. Tape-measures round their own waists, and twisted two or
three times at the back, which they could not see. Blunt scissors,
clumsy hands, bad material.... It was a nightmare to Sally. She did not
go far enough to imagine the despairs, the aching hands, the tears,
which attended the realisation of an evening's botch. She was not really
a very humane person. She had both too much imagination for that
infirmity of the will, and not enough. She passed from dressmaking to
the other subjects.

There was one that made her jump, so much did it seem to be named there
for her own especial