n a mincing stage voice.
"I'm feeling very, very, _very_ well, my Lord Dook, Mr. V.V. On'y I
decided I'd spend to-day lazyin' at my writin'-desk, readin' over my
billy-doox from peers of the rellum, 'stead of working my hands and legs
off in that nasty, _nasty_, NASTY--"

"Stop that cuckoo-clock nonsense!" called Mr. V.V., starting to walk
towards her. "What are you doing here, I say?"

"I'm helping mommer soak colliflower, Mr. V.V. Honest!" "But why didn't
you stay at the Works? Come, stop this foolishness, Corinne, and answer
me sensibly."

The girl's cheek rested against the door-facing. She stopped her
foolishness.

"Mr. V.V., I'm fired."

A bullet would not have stopped Mr. V.V.'s advance more abruptly.

"You're WHAT?"

Kern nodded slowly a number of times. "I wasn't goin' to tell you till I
got me another job, and maybe never, on'y you caught me--"

"Come here," said Mr. V.V. in rather a queer voice. "Walk," he added, as
she began to take the long hall at a skip.

Kern came at a walk. Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out
that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had
accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor,
though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and
following three weeks of idleness. However, after her sex, her present
overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from Mr.
V.V.'s face.

"It's on'y some of that sickenin' MacQueen's foolishness," she called
out from some distance away--"and I was tired of workin' in that old
nasty place anyway. Up and said he didn't have no job for me. Didn't
have _a_ job for me. So I just laughed at him and stayed round a little
while, havin' a good time, and then he happened up to the bunchin' room
and told me to git. So I gitted ... Lor, Mr. V.V.! I can find all the
good places _I_ want. Goodness me, sir! I'll get more orfers of jobs--"

"Come into the office," said Mr. V.V., turning back.

In the office, Kern, acting under medical instruction, sat down on the
horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple story in detail.

In these weeks, while she had gone down with mild pleurisy, been
successfully "tapped" and haled back to something like an economically
valuable condition, the work of the world had marched on. That another
operative sat now on Kern's stool and manipulated Kern's machine might
appear natural enough, as the superintendent, it seemed,