o
be a beehive of bedrooms, floor above floor, and each floor as low as
the building regulations permitted. There were to be long dormitories
with cubicles at three-and-sixpence a week--make your own beds--and
separate rooms at prices ranging from four-and-sixpence to
seven-and-sixpence. Every three cubicles and every bedroom had lavatory
basins with hot and cold water; there were pull-out drawers under the
beds and a built-in chest of drawers, a hanging cupboard, a
looking-glass and a radiator in each cubicle, and each floor had a
box-room. It was ship-shape.

"A girl can get this cubicle for three-and-six a week," said Sir Isaac,
tapping the drawing before him with his pencil. "She can get her
breakfast with a bit of bacon or a sausage for two shillings a week,
and she can get her high tea, with cold meat, good potted salmon, shrimp
paste, jam and cetera, for three-and-six a week. Say her bus fares and
lunch out mean another four shillings. That means she can get along on
about twelve-and-six a week, comfortable, read the papers, have a book
out of the library.... There's nothing like it to be got now for twice
the money. The sort of thing they have now is one room, dingy, badly
fitted, extra for coals.

"That's the answer to your problem, Elly," he said. "There we are. Every
girl who doesn't live at home can live here--with a matron to keep her
eye on her.... And properly run, Elly, properly run the thing's going to
pay two or three per cent,--let alone the advertisement for the Stores.

"We can easily make these Hostels obligatory on all our girls who don't
live at their own homes," he said. "That ought to keep them off the
streets, if anything can. I don't see how even Miss Babs Wheeler can
have the face to strike against that.

"And then we can arrange with some of the big firms, drapers' shops and
all that sort of thing near each hostel, to take over most of our other
cubicle space. A lot of them--overflow.

"Of course we'll have to make sure the girls get in at night." He
reached out for a ground floor plan of the Bloomsbury establishment
which was to be the first built. "If," he said, "we were to have a sort
of porter's lodge with a book--and make 'em ring a bell after eleven
say--just here...."

He took out a silver pencil case and got to work.

Lady Harman's expression as she leant over him became thoughtful.

There were points about this project that gave her the greatest
misgivings; that matron, k