While the others settled down, whispering among themselves and looking sharply at Sally, the forewoman, after a greeting, ignored her until she had attended to all that was more important. In her hands was the giving out of work. Sally saw that she was supposed to know what each girl could do. She also saw that some girls were favourites and others not. If she were to make progress here she must be a favourite. She must show quickly that she had the brains and could work well. It took a very short time to make her realise that. For a moment she was inclined to be over-confident; but that mood collapsed before a side glance and a titter from two of the girls. Their instinctive ridicule warned and stiffened Sally. They did not know her. She would have to prove her qualities. She then concentrated upon Miss Summers, watching how she turned, how she smiled and frowned, and how she explained what had to be done to each girl who was receiving new work. Miss Summers was a short stout woman with cat's eyes and a long nose. She licked her lips like a cat. She was inconsistent and short-tempered; but Sally afterwards found that while she was extraordinarily vain she was rarely unkind. But in general she was severe, because severity was the only course to pursue with these chattering girls, who were full of scratches and jealousies, and who would have taken advantage of weakness with rapid unscrupulousness. So the little stout woman, feline and easily exasperated, was a good person to control the room. Her kindness might be part of her vanity, but it was not assumed. She loved her work, and she was always glad to praise good work from the girls, and to encourage it by favouritism to good workers. It was not the pretty ones or the sly ones who were the favourites. It was the workers. Following each girl with her eye, Sally could not observe that at the beginning; but it did not take her long to add it to her now formidable collection of facts. When at last Sally was called to Miss Summers's side, and questioned, she walked the length of the room feeling as though her legs had no joints, and as though her shoulders were fixed. There were only eleven girls in the room besides herself, but they were all looking at her. And when she stood before Miss Summers in her little black dress she looked so slight, with her slim body and thin pale face, that several of the girls went on with their work again immediately, having lost interest in her. Sally, confronted by Miss Summers's cat-like eyes, which were a gooseberry green, twisted her fingers, and blurted out: "I'm sorry, I got no pinafore. I didn't know I had to have one." She was relieved when Miss Summers smiled and licked her lips. "Well, let's make you one for a start-off. Shall we?" Sally could have fallen down, so astonished was she at this retort. Still she blurted further: "I got no money for the material."