She went into the small room, which was at the moment empty. The cover had not been removed from her own machine, but the other two machines were open, and Millicent’s was ammunitioned with paper. Lilian could hear Milly, who shared the small room with herself and Gertie Jackson, dividing work and giving instructions in an important, curt voice to the mere rabble of girls in the large room. To Lilian’s practised sense there was throughout the office an atmosphere of nervous disturbance and unease. Mr. Grig being absent, she felt sure that before the end of the day--probably just about tea-time--the electrical fluid would concentrate itself in one spot and then explode in a tense, violent, bitter and yet only murmured scene between two of the girls in the large room--unless, of course, she herself and Millicent happened to get across one another. She took off her things and put them in the clothes cupboard. Gertie’s hat and jacket were absent, which meant that Gertie was already out somewhere on the firm’s business. Millicent’s precious boa was present instead of her thick scarf, which meant that Millicent was to meet at night the insufferably pert young man from the new branch of Lloyds Bank in Bond Street. The pert young man would dine Millicent at the Popular Café in Piccadilly, where for as little as five shillings two persons might have a small table to themselves, the aphrodisiac of music, and the ingenuous illusion of seeing Life with a capital. Now Lilian never connected Life with anything less than the Savoy, the Carlton, and the Ritz. Lilian had been born with a sure instinct in these high matters. She looked at the contents of the clothes-cupboard and despised them, furiously--and in particular Millicent’s boa; anybody could see what that was; it would not deceive even a bank clerk. Not that Lilian possessed any article of attire to surpass the boa in intrinsic worth! She did not. But she felt no envy in regard to the boa, and indeed never envied any girl the tenth-rate--no, nor the second-rate! Her desire was for the best or nothing; she could not compromise. The neighbouring shop-windows had effectively educated her because she was capable of self-education. Millicent and Gertie actually preferred the inferior displays of Oxford Street. She gazed in froward insolence at the workroom full of stitching girls on the opposite side of the street. They were toiling as though they had been toiling for hours. Customers had not yet begun to be shown into the elegant apartment on the floor below the workrooms. Customers were probably still sipping tea in bed with a maid to help them, and some of them had certainly never been in a Tube in their lives. Yet the workgirls, seen broadly across the street, were on the average younger, prettier, daintier and more graceful than the customers. Why then...? Etc.