a very little to start her tears. Her voice shook so that I could hardly make out what she said. 

 “Pollie, what do you think they’ll do to us?” 

 “I don’t know. Where’s Tom? Did he get in all right? Has he—been sent for?” 

 “How can I tell? I don’t know anything about Mr. Cooper. You know, Pollie, it was not my fault that I was in late.” 

 “So far as I know it was neither of our faults. I wonder if Tom got in all right.” 

 “Bother Tom! It’s very hard on me. I wonder if they’ll fine us?” 

 Before I could answer Mr. Slaughter put his head out of the office. 

 “Come in there! Stop that chattering! Are you the two young women I sent for?” 

 We went in, standing like two guilty things. Mr. Slaughter sat at his desk. 

 “Which of you is Mary Blyth?” 

 “I am, sir.” 

 “Oh, you are, are you?” 

 He leant back in his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked me up and down, as if he was valuing me. He was a little man, with untidy hair and a scrubby black beard. I could not have been more afraid of him if he had been a dozen times as big. He had a way of speaking as if he would like to bite you; and as if he wished you to clearly understand that, should he have to speak again, he would take a piece clean out of you. Everybody about the place was more frightened of him than of Mr. Cardew. It was he who had made it what it was. In the beginning it had been nothing; now there were all those shops. He was a thorough man of business, without a grain of feeling in him. We all felt that he looked on us assistants as if we were so many inferior cattle, not to be compared, for instance, to the horses which drew his vans. 

 I could have sunk through the ground as he continued to stare at me. It was more than I could do to meet his eyes; yet something seemed to say that he did not think much of what he saw. His first words showed that I was right. 

 “Well, Mary Blyth, it seems that you’re an altogether good-for-nothing young woman. From what I 

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