Now that Miss Summers had more to do, Sally was very useful to her. Also, Sally came to admire Miss Summers more than ever. She might be funny, with her eternally cold nose and her cat-like appearance, but she was an extraordinarily capable woman. She rose to emergencies, which is the sign of essential greatness. Not once did Sally see Miss Summers lose her nerve. True, there was no need for diplomacy or large generalship; but when work has to be arranged so that all customers are satisfied, not only with its quality but with the promptness of its delivery, a good deal of skill and management is required. It was forthcoming; and Sally was at hand to give important aid. The weak spot in the government of the business seemed to be Gaga, who betrayed incessant vacillation, and came in so often to consult Miss Summers that she became quite ruffled and indignant with him. "Such nonsense!" she would say to Sally. "A grown up man like that asking such silly questions. Why a _girl_ would do it better." She had all the capable woman's contempt for the average member of her own sex. "Girls!" she would sniff. Shrewdly, Sally watched the comedy; but for all her shrewdness she never quite understood the cause of Gaga's weakness. It was that Madam had insisted upon early obedience in days when Gaga's precocious ill-health made him pliable; and a docile child becomes a tractable boy and finally a man who needs constant guidance. Sally only saw the last stage. She nodded grimly to herself one day. "Wants somebody to look after him," she said. "Somebody to manage him." With one of her unerring supplements she added confidently: "I could manage him. And look after him, too, for that matter. Poor lamb!" The extra work kept Miss Summers and Miss Rapson late almost every evening, and Sally also stayed, so that in the evenings she often saw Gaga. She even, once or twice, when Miss Summers had gone to consult Miss Rapson (who stood upon her dignity and kept to her own room), sought pretexts for going into the room where Gaga was. She went in to look at the Directory, or she pretended that she had supposed Miss Summers with him; and on these occasions she stood at the door, and talked, until Miss Summers' imminent return made her fly innocently back to her seat. She enjoyed observing Gaga's pleasure, and even excitement, at her approach. It gratified her naughty vanity and her impulse to the exploitation of others. One evening when she had thus stolen five minutes, she found Gaga ruffling his hair over an account, and at his great sigh of bewilderment she turned from the book she was needlessly consulting. "Got a headache, Mr. Bertram?" she timidly and commiseratingly asked. Gaga looked up at her gratefully, a comic expression of dismay upon his face. The books lay before him upon the table, and an account had been transferred from one to another. A litter of papers was also there. He was in the last stages of perplexity.