shop
assistants from various department stores. The Bloomsbury Hostel in
particular now accommodated a hundred refined and elegant hands--they
ought rather to be called figures--from the great Oxford Street costume
house of Eustace and Mills, young people with a tall sweeping movement
and an elevation of chin that had become nearly instinctive, and a
silent yet evident intention to find the International girls "low" at
the slightest provocation. It is only too easy for poor humanity under
the irritation of that tacit superiority to respond with just the
provocation anticipated. What one must regretfully speak of as the
vulgar section of the International girls had already put itself in the
wrong by a number of aggressive acts before the case came to Lady
Harman's attention. Mrs. Pembrose seized the occasion for weeding on a
courageous scale, and Miss Alice Burnet and three of her dearest friends
were invited to vacate their rooms "pending redecoration".

With only too much plausibility the threatened young women interpreted
this as an expulsion, and declined to remove their boxes and personal
belongings. Miss Babs Wheeler thereupon entered the Bloomsbury Hostel,
and in the teeth of three express prohibitions from Mrs. Pembrose, went
a little up the staircase and addressed a confused meeting in the
central hall. There was loud and continuous cheering for Lady Harman at
intervals during this incident. Thereupon Mrs. Pembrose demanded
sweeping dismissals, not only from the Hostels but the shops as an
alternative to her resignation, and Lady Harman found herself more
perplexed than ever....

Georgina Sawbridge had contrived to mingle herself in an entirely
characteristic way in these troubles by listening for a brief period to
an abstract of her sister's perplexities, then demanding to be made
Director-General of the whole affair, refusing to believe this simple
step impossible and retiring in great dudgeon to begin a series of
letters of even more than sisterly bitterness. And Mr. Brumley when
consulted had become dangerously sentimental. Under these circumstances
Lady Harman's visit to Saint Paul's had much of the quality of a flight.

It was with an unwonted sense of refuge that she came from the sombre
stress and roar of London without into the large hushed spaces of the
cathedral. The door closed behind her--and all things changed. Here was
meaning, coherence, unity. Here instead of a pelting confusion of
movements