"Look at them!" snapped Miss Stein, maddened by a consignment of more blouses from the bankrupt sale (which had brought upon Horrocks the gibes of the head buyer), blouses without sashes, which not even Poiret could have turned into "Pavlovas." "Look at them, the fat, old, self-satisfied lemons, with their hats and their dresses and their squeezed-in corsets and shoes, and even their back hair, bought in sweat shops like ours! Pills, going to their homes to say their prayers, and then, full o' dinner, to the meeting of the Anti-Sweats. I know em! Maybe they'll do some o' the sweatin' in kingdom come!"
Already Win had learned that a "lemon" or a "pill" was a customer who made as much trouble as possible for as small as possible a return; but it gave her a stab
to hear Peter Rolls's great department store called a "sweat shop." Again she saw the eyes. Was she never to get rid of the memory of those hypocritical blue eyes?
Nobody thought of being ready for home until nearly ten o'clock; and long before that Miss Stein's nerves felt as if they had been run, like threads, through the eyes of hot needles. Again Win had helped her in the afternoon by placing blouses of congenial colours together on the counters instead of letting them lie anyhow, as Miss Stein, in her recklessness, would have done. But less than ever had the elder girl seen reason for thanking Miss Child when the second instalment of "punk" goods was brought out of "reserve."
If the first lot had not gone off so soon they would not have been saddled with this, and so 2884 had, in Miss Stein's estimation, done nothing at the end of the day except "show herself off" and make everybody work twice as hard as necessary. She would not tell Win how to put things away, or let anybody else help her out.
"You gotta learn for yourself or you never will," she said sharply, all the more sharply because Fred Thorpe, the floorwalker, happened to be within earshot.
"I don't care what he thinks of me!" she said fiercely to herself, knowing that Thorpe would understand and disapprove her injustice to the new girl. But it was only half true that she did not care.
She was longing desperately for somebody to love her; and though she could not in decency have accepted, after the way she had treated him, she wished that Thorpe would ask her to have supper with him that night. The Westlake pig, she knew, was going to Dorlon's for a pan
roast with Horrocks, for the creature had told all the girls who were sure to run with it to her, Dora Stein. Thorpe would have been a faded flag to flaunt in the face of the enemy—a floorwalker, to one who had mashed a department manager! Still it would have been comforting to know that she still had attractions for some one, and at least she would have liked the chance to refuse an invitation.
Thorpe, on his part, would joyfully have asked her, for he could not quite "unlove" the beautiful face he had once adored, though he knew now exactly what a fierce spirit lived behind it. He was well aware of his own weakness and was humble enough to confuse with it the kindness of heart which permitted such treatment as he had received.