lled her. Miss Summers
looked spiteful, Rose Anstey was sniffling with a cold, the others were
listless and tired. It was a muggy morning, and all spirits were low.
Sally's were lower than any others in the room. She began to work with
only half her ordinary attentiveness, broke her cotton, snapped a
needle, fidgetted. Her eyelids were hot, and she felt a headache begin
to throb faintly in promise of greater effort later in the day. She was
restless and wretched, looking at the door which probably hid Gaga. Even
the memory of last night's kisses was stale and unsatisfactory. As she
drew her breath in a half-sob, Sally longed suddenly for Toby. She
longed for his strong arms, his possessive air, his muscular strength.
And as she thought of Toby a tear came to her eye, and she felt that
life was not worth living. A consciousness of childish need for support
destroyed all her confidence at a blow. How she hated all these stupid
girls! How she longed for something--she could not imagine what--which
should take her out of their company. Complaint filled her mind. Why
should she have to work, to go backwards and forwards between the
workroom and that miserable home where her mother stewed incessantly and
followed the course of her monotonous days? It was a mood of pure
reaction, but it made Sally desperate. Her head began to ache more
noticeably. She was almost crying.

That, perhaps, was the condition of them all. None of the girls spoke,
and all looked black and miserable as they bent over their work, or
slacked and glanced around them. Outside, the rain began to fall, and
the sky was grey with cloud. The lights had to be switched on, and they
cast a deceptive glow upon all work, and idiotic shadows of the moving
fingers of the girls. Miss Summers glowered and rubbed the tip of her
nose; and at each crack or rustle of a chair or a piece of material she
glanced sharply up, as though she were fighting with an impulse to
scream. Sally felt that if Miss Summers had screamed they would all
have screamed. She herself was tempted to scream first, so as to see
what would happen. She thought that all work would be instantly thrown
down, and that everybody would answer her cry, and then begin noisily to
sob. Even miserable as she was, the thought of this avalanche of
feminine excitability made Sally snuffle with amusement. She pictured
Gaga running out of his room, distraught, looking yellow and bilious,
his eyes staring wildly out o