ing the
privet hedge that screened his green mat at the front. Only Violet got
tired of seeing him doing it. More than once, when Ranny's innocent back
was turned she watched it, scowling. She was so far "gone on him" that
she couldn't bear to see him taken up with Granville. She hated the very
flowers as his hands caressed them. She hated the little tree he had
planted at the bottom of the back garden. For the little tree had kept
him out one night till nearly ten o'clock, after Violet had expressly
told him that she was going to bed at nine.

* * * * *

Violet was not tired; but she was tired of Granville.

After six weeks of it she began to long secretly for Starker's
Millinery Saloons. In the saloon you walked looking beautiful through a
flowery and a feathery grove of hats. You had nothing to do but to try
hats on and to sell them, and each sale was a personal triumph for the
seller. Violet knew she could sell more hats than any other of the girls
at Starker's; she knew she had a pretty way of putting on a hat, of
turning slowly round and round in it to show the side and crown, of
standing motionless before a customer while her blue eyes made play that
advertised the irresistible fascinations of the brim. At Starker's she
went from one triumph to another.

For gentlemen came to the Millinery Saloons, gentlemen whose looks said
plainly that they found her prettier than the ladies that they brought;
gentlemen who sometimes came again alone, who for two words would buy a
hat and give it you. At Starker's there was always a chance of something
happening.

At Granville nothing happened, nothing ever could happen. Granville,
when it didn't keep you doing things, gave you nothing to look at,
nothing to think about, nothing to take an interest in, and nobody to
take an interest in you. It left you sitting in a lonely window looking
out into a lonely Avenue, an Avenue where nobody (nobody to speak of)
ever came. And not only did Violet long for Starker's Millinery Saloons,
she longed for Oxford Street, she longed for the adventurous setting
forth in bus or tram, with the feeling that anything might happen before
the day was over; she longed for the still more adventurous stepping out
of the little door in Starker's shutter into the amorously hovering
crowd, for the furtive looking round with eyes all bright for the
encounter; above all she longed for somebody, no matter who, to come,
som