She presently passed the ugly building of a Board School, not the one which she had attended, but one nearer her present home. Outside it, and within the railings protecting the asphalted playground from the footpath, was a notice-board upon which was pasted a bill advertising the evening classes which would be held there during the Autumn Session. Idly, Sally stopped to read down the list of subjects--and the first that caught her eye, of course, was dressmaking. She gave a sniff. Funny lot of girls would go to that. Girls trying to do Miss Jubb out of a job. Sally glimpsed their efforts. She had seen girls in dresses which they had made themselves. Poor mites! she thought. Paper patterns for somebody twice their size, and bad calculations of the necessary reductions. Tape-measures round their own waists, and twisted two or three times at the back, which they could not see. Blunt scissors, clumsy hands, bad material.... It was a nightmare to Sally. She did not go far enough to imagine the despairs, the aching hands, the tears, which attended the realisation of an evening's botch. She was not really a very humane person. She had both too much imagination for that infirmity of the will, and not enough. She passed from dressmaking to the other subjects. There was one that made her jump, so much did it seem to be named there for her own especial benefit. It was "Book-keeping." Sally was taken aback. She scanned the details. Two lessons a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, at eight o'clock. A disdain filled her. She would not be as the other girls. She would learn book-keeping. She would understand figures. Then she could help Gaga with precisely that work which he confessed himself unable to do. Sally memorised the details. It was enough; she was ready for anything. As the following Monday was the first night of the session she would be present then. And so, her ambition mounting once more to arrogance, Sally returned to bed and her mother, and bread and margarine, and the dingy room on the second-floor-back. xi