While she went on in this theatrical vein, Janet was thinking to herself: "She makes as great a virtue of being married as she formerly made of not being married. Whatever her condition, there’s a terrible to-do about it." Aloud she said: "Look here, Cornelia, if you want to talk privately to me, hadn’t we better get rid of this retinue?" Without awaiting a reply, she calmly released Marie and the other manikins from service and sent them out of the room. This done, she took a chair opposite the desk where Cornelia sat staring at her in speechless indignation. Cornelia cherished a sort of mental chromo of herself as the active ruler of the Paulette community, a ruler at once imperious, genial, and adored. In point of fact, her insatiable appetite for attention, reinforced by a sharp tongue, spread an atmosphere of dread and anxiety around her. Janet was the only person who had ever succeeded in weakening Cornelia’s illusion about herself by bringing it into occasional juxtaposition with reality. "You’ll greatly oblige me, Janet, by not ordering my servants about under my very nose." "Your manikins are not your servants, Cornelia. They’re your employees. You slave-drive them outrageously. If you don’t look out, you’ll have a strike on your hands before long." "With you as the strike leader, I dare say?" "Why not? Your inability to respect other people’s time is simply appalling. The moment some whim pops into your head, one of us is called upon to gratify it. You quite forget that when you arbitrarily take us from our jobs, bang goes continuity, a most important factor in good workmanship. Mazie, who came here grovelling in the dust, is now up in arms; the manikins are unitedly rebellious; Harry is almost a nervous wreck. This, with business simply deluging the establishment. I tell you, unless _you_ stop, we all will." Cornelia quailed under these words, although she kept her face admirably. She was in some respects like a wrongly bound volume: half Becky Sharp and half Hedda Gabler. And it was the Hedda Gabler pages she always turned up to Janet. "Well, what next?" she exclaimed, on the defensive in spite of her brave words. "I’ve rescued Mazie Ross out of the gutter where Hutchins Burley flung her; I’ve sacrificed my own creature comforts to make those of the manikins secure; I’ve given _you_ a very tidy berth and no questions asked; and I’ve worked myself to skin and bones for Harry’s sake. Now you all turn on me and call me an interfering busybody, or worse. That’s human gratitude." Janet, giving the faintest ironical shrug, merely looked at her.