“I am getting experience.”
“To be used in the next world?”
They laughed.
“Miss Madden is better to-day, I hope?”
“Alice? Not much, I’m sorry to say.”
“Will you tell me something more about the “experience” you are getting? For instance, what time is given you for meals?”
Rhoda Nunn was not the person to manufacture light gossip when a matter of the gravest interest waited for discussion. With a face that expressed thoughtful sympathy, she encouraged the girl to speak and confide in her.
“There’s twenty minutes for each meal,” Monica explained; “but at dinner and tea one is very likely to be called into the shop before finishing. If you are long away you find the table cleared.”
“Charming arrangement! No sitting down behind the counter, I suppose?”
“Oh, of course not. We suffer a great deal from that. Some of us get diseases. A girl has just gone to the hospital with varicose veins, and two or three others have the same thing in a less troublesome form. Sometimes, on Saturday night, I lose all feeling in my feet; I have to stamp on the floor to be sure it’s still under me.”