Paul was perturbed.

"Why, Susan?"

The girl's colour was high, and her eyes flashed.

"That's why!"

"And must you?"

For answer, she looked at him. There was about him a candour and
gentleness which made the women trust him. He understood.

"Ah, I'm sorry," he said.

Tears came to her eyes.

"But you'll see it'll turn out all right. You'll make the best of it,"
he continued rather wistfully.

"There's nothing else for it."

"Yea, there's making the worst of it. Try and make it all right."

He soon made occasion to call again on Clara.

"Would you," he said, "care to come back to Jordan's?"

She put down her work, laid her beautiful arms on the table, and looked
at him for some moments without answering. Gradually the flush mounted
her cheek.

"Why?" she asked.

Paul felt rather awkward.

"Well, because Susan is thinking of leaving," he said.

Clara went on with her jennying. The white lace leaped in little jumps
and bounds on to the card. He waited for her. Without raising her head,
she said at last, in a peculiar low voice:

"Have you said anything about it?"

"Except to you, not a word."

There was again a long silence.

"I will apply when the advertisement is out," she said.

"You will apply before that. I will let you know exactly when."

She went on spinning her little machine, and did not contradict him.

Clara came to Jordan's. Some of the older hands, Fanny among them,
remembered her earlier rule, and cordially disliked the memory. Clara
had always been "ikey", reserved, and superior. She had never mixed with
the girls as one of themselves. If she had occasion to find fault, she
did it coolly and with perfect politeness, which the defaulter felt to
be a bigger insult than crassness. Towards Fanny, the poor, overstrung
hunchback, Clara was unfailingly compassionate and gentle, as a result
of which Fanny shed more bitter tears than ever the rough tongues of the
other overseers had caused her.

There was something in Clara that Paul disliked, and much that piqued
him. If she were about, he always watched her strong throat or her neck,
upon which the blonde hair grew low and fluffy. There was a fine down,
almost invisible, upon the skin of her face and arms, and when once he
had perceived it, he saw it always.

When he was at his work, painting in the afternoon, she would come and
stand near to him, perfectly motionless. Then he felt her, though she
neither spoke nor touched him