She stopped short; and then added shyly, with a kind of anxiousness in her wide dark gaze: "An expression, ma'am--for Heaven. I--I just learned it."
The lady's look was absent. "Oh!... Where did you learn that?"
"Off Sadie Whirtle, ma'am--a friend of mine." The girl hesitated, and then said: "That's her now."
And she pointed a small finger at the enormous snapping Saleslady, who stood glowering and patting her transformation at another customer ten feet away.
But Carlisle did not follow the finger, and so missed the sight of Miss Whirtle. Her rising relief had been penetrated by a doubt, not a new one ... Would her friend Vivian have committed himself to the articles for only a foolish sentimentalism which the poor themselves repudiated?...
"But tell me frankly, Corinne, for I want to know," said she--"I know working must be hard in any case--but do the girls at the Works consider it a--a reasonably nice place?"
Kern knew nothing of the articles, of any situation: and at that Co-rinne, her heart ran to water within her. She would have said anything for that.
"Oh, ma'am, all say it's the nicest place to work in town. Yes, ma'am ... And some of 'em has rich fathers and needn't work at all anywhere, but they just go on and work at the Works, yes, ma'am, because they druther ..."
That, by a little, drew the long-bow too hard. Cally saw that the small three-years' buncher, through politeness or otherwise, was speaking without reference to the truth. And hard upon that she had another thought, striking down the impulse to cross-examine further. What an undignified, what a cowardly way, to try to find things out! What a baby she was, to be sure!... V. Vivian knew about the Works, though it was certainly no affair of his. This frail girl, who did look rather sick now that you stopped and looked at her, knew all about it. Only she, her father's daughter, knew nothing, wrapped in her layers of pretty pink wool ...
The lady came abruptly to her feet.