and fussy person who always wore a grey pinafore and felt that her untidy grey hair looked as though it might hint a sorrow rather than betray advancing years. Miss Jubb was full of the futile vanity of the elderly spinster, her mouth full of pins, and her head full of paper patterns. She lived with her mother on two floors of an old house, and one of the downstairs rooms was used on Sundays for sitting in and during the week for trying on. The work she did never[Pg 24] suggested anything of the enormous pains Miss Jubb took in fitting, in fastening pins and cutting out. She was incurably a bad dressmaker; but she gave her clients the impression that she knew her business. This was because she was so careful, and because they knew no better than she did what women may and may not wear with propriety. The backs of all skirts coming from Miss Jubb drooped lower than the fronts. Her bodices always went wrong upon the shoulders. She was great on tucks. But she was cheap, and she was Sybil-like in her mysterious assurance. So she supported herself and her mother; while May and Sally did the rough basting and all sorts of odd jobs in the room behind the parlour. Here were the big cutting-out table, the treadled sewing machine, three or four chairs, many fragments of material, several half-made garments, and, upon the walls, a number of coloured prints from fashion papers. In such surroundings Sally spent her days. She ate her lunch at twelve o'clock, and had her tea at four. And as her fingers worked, or her feet occasionally by special permission propelled the sewing machine, she thought of the future and planned to get into the West End.

[Pg 24]

It was the West End that now lured her. If only she could get into the West End all her troubles would be wiped away at once, she felt. She could possibly make more money there; but even if she did not succeed in that aim she would still be in the running for better work. That she could do better work she never doubted. And she knew that as long as she was with Miss Jubb she would never do anything at all. Some instinct told her that. She knew it. She knew it as clearly as if she had surveyed the future from above. It was not that she was suddenly wise; but only that ambition had come into her consciousness. The blow she had received by her father's death had struck deep into her character. She[Pg 25] had now to make something of her life, or starve. With a quick circle of thought she imagined her mother dead. What would happen then? What chance had she? Only vaguely did Sally glimpse the possibilities. She knew she could not keep herself. She had one aunt—her mother's sister—with two boy children who were both 

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