ks showed most ferocity in their eyes and the late-comers
most weariness.

'Where you shovin'?' asked a sulky voice.

There was a mutter that might have been a curse. Then silence once more;
and the girls fiercely watched for their bread, looking right and left
like suspicious dogs. A spruce young warehouseman slowly reviewed the
girls and allowed his eyes to linger approvingly on one or two. He
winked approvingly at the fair girl but she did not respond. She stood
flat against the door, every inch of her body spread so as to occupy as
much space as she could.

Then, half-past seven, a young man and a middle-aged woman shouldering
through the wedged mass, the fierce rush into the shop and there the
gasp behind closed doors among the other winners, hatless, their clothes
torn, their bodices ripped open to the stays, one with her hair down and
her neck marked here and there by bleeding scratches. Then, after the
turmoil of the day among the strangeness, without rest or food, to make
holiday for the Londoners, a night heavy as lead and a week every day
more mechanical, Victoria had returned to the treadmill and, within a
week, knew it.

. . . . The clock struck five. Victoria awoke from her dream epic. She
had won her battle and sailed into harbour. Its waters were already as
horribly still as those of a stagnant pool. The old chestnut vendor sat
motionless on her seat of firewood and string. Not a thought chased over
her gnarled brown face. From the stove came the faint pungent smell of
the charring peel.

CHAPTER XX

A FORTNIGHT later Victoria had returned to the City. Most of the old
P.R's had reopened, after passing under the yoke. A coat of paint had
transformed them into P.R.R's. In fact their extinction was complete;
nothing was left of them but the P. and the chairmanship of the
amalgamated company, for their chairman was an earl and part of the
goodwill. The P.R. had apparently been bought up at a fair rate. Its
shares having fallen to sixpence, most of the shareholders had lost
large sums; whereas the directors and their friends, displaying the
acumen that is sometimes found among directors, had quietly bought the
shares up by the thousand and by putting them into the new company had
realised large profits. As the failure had happened during the old year
and most of the shops had been reopened in the new, it was quite clear
that the catering trade was expanding. It was a startling instance of
comm