"Princess, queen!" he murmured sotto voce, and Win might have had the privilege of exchanging a smile with him on the strength of the joke, but thought it might be wiser not to have heard.
Luckily black skirts and blouses were not the craze of the moment. Women were besieging a beehive of corsets and a hotbed of petticoats, reduced (so said huge red letters overhead) to one third of their original price. In less than five minutes Win had secured a costume with the right measurements, and for the two portions of which it consisted, had paid exactly one week's salary.
With an unwrapped parcel rolled under one arm, she battled her way back to the staircase she had descended (not daring to squeeze her unworthy body into a crowded elevator), and toiled up to the eighth floor. There, she had been told, were dressing-rooms as well as lockers; a rest room (converted into a schoolroom from the hour of eight until ten), and the restaurant for women employees.
Lightning change act first! Black Effect to take the place of brown, a rush for the dressing-room, vague impression of near marble basins and rows of mirrors; tall, slim girl in front of one, quite the proper "saleslady" air, in new, six-dollar black skirt and silk blouse lightened with sewed-in frills of white, fit not noticeably bad; dash along corridor again for locker room, but sudden wavering pause at sight of confused group: half-fainting girl in black being handed over to capped and aproned nurse by two youths at an open door, glimpse of iron bedsteads etched in black against varnished white wall, door shut with slap; youths marching light heartedly away, keeping time to the subdued whistle of "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."
Girls sometimes faint here, then, before ten o'clock in the morning! And quite a matter of course to shed them in the hospital room, otherwise one wouldn't try one's tango steps going away. But never mind; laugh first, or the world will! Life easier for Peter Rolls's hands as well as other people if they can live it in ragtime. Your turn to fall to-day. Mine to-morrow. "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee!" And whatever you may think, don't lose a minute.
Winifred did not. Perhaps she, too, was beginning to think in ragtime. She was telling her number to the doorkeeper of the locker room as the slap of the hospital door ceased to vibrate through the long corridor on the eighth story.
The locker room had countless rows of narrow cells with iron gratings for doors; and the gimlet gaze of two stalwart young females pierced each newcomer. It was their business to see that Peter Rolls's hands did not pilfer
each other's belongings. The gimlet eyes must note the outdoor clothing each girl wore on arrival, in order to be sure that she did not go forth at evening clad in the property of a comrade. Being paid to cultivate suspicion had soured the guardian angels' tempers. One had a novel by Laura Jean Libbey, the other an old-fashioned tale by Mary J. Holmes, to while away odd minutes of leisure; but it appealed to the imagination of neither that any or all of the girls flitting in and out might be eligible heroines for their favourite authors, stolen at birth from parent millionaires, qualifying through pathetic struggles with poverty to become the brides of other millionaires, or, perhaps, to win an earl or duke.
All the regularly engaged hands had long ago shut up their hats and cloaks in prison and gone about their business. It was only the extras who were arriving at this late hour to show their numbers and claim their lockers. There were comparatively few amateurs. Most of the girls had had shop experience, but greenhorns betrayed ignorance as they entered. To them, shortly and succinctly, were explained the rules: the system of "stubs" dealt out to newcomers as they gave their numbers and had lockers assigned them—stubs to be religiously kept for the protection of property from false claimants; the working of a slot machine, in which must be slipped a card, and the moment of the morning and midday arrival thus recorded with ruthless exactitude (twenty-five cents docked off your pay if you were late), and other odds and ends of routine information, such as the hours at which lockers might or might not be opened without the presentation of special passes.
As Win fitted her key into the grated door which would in future pertain to No. 2884, into the locker room bounced the sardine.