What if Madam were away ill? What if she died? Sally trembled at the prospect. She trembled lest some accident should interfere with what was otherwise inevitable. She knew that with Miss Summers she had no rival; her compact with Gaga was secure, unless his weakness betrayed them. Even here, she knew she might rely upon his integrity. Gaga would keep to his word. Sally saw herself installed as bookkeeper--oh, if she were only older! If she were older, if she were twenty-five, she would hold the business in the hollow of her hand. She was already learning how to speak to the ladies who came to give orders; her shrewdness would quickly show her which were good accounts and which required watching; and her work never grew careless. With each perception Sally's brain and her capacity for adapting herself to every circumstance seemed to expand. She was already much older than her years. With a little more experience she would be in a commanding position. But Madam must be ill, Madam must.... Madam must be very ill; and yet not before Sally had made sure of Gaga. Gaga was the key with which she would enter into her proper sphere. He must be her mascot. With her head bent Sally stitched busily on, never allowing ambition to distract her from the immediate task. Baffled, the girls fell again to their work. That Sally Minto was deep--you couldn't tell what she was doing, what she was thinking. She was deep. Under her breath Sally was humming a tune, a familiar tune. A slow grin spread over her white face, and faded again. Looking up, she caught Miss Summers's eye, and smiled faintly, gratefully, reassuringly. She recognised at once how pleased and proud Miss Summers was at Sally's progress. If her mind had not been so busy, Sally would have felt a little warmth stealing into her heart; but she was not aware of anything except Sally Minto and her plans for worldly advancement. She for this moment saw Miss Summers also merely as an instrument, a plump, pussy-faced woman with an eternally cold nose and a heart quick to respond to the best efforts of her favourite hand. xv It was with a jump of excitement that Sally heard, in the following week, that Madam was very ill indeed. Gaga came in the morning with a haggard face, having spent the night by his mother's bedside. He had a few words with Miss Summers, who came out of the room with a comically solemn look upon her plump face. She made no remark to the girls, but at lunch time, when the others were out, or were dispersed in the part of the building where they were allowed to eat whatever they had brought for lunch, Sally stole into Madam's room and found Gaga there, sitting at the desk with his hands covering his face. When Sally approached him he did not seem to have heard her, but continued sitting thus lost in a depressed stupor. Sally knew that there was nobody in the room behind her: they were quite alone.