"What on earth have you taken up this kind of work for?"
"Why shouldn't I?" asked Millie with spirit.
"Well, you're pretty and you're young and your clothes don't look exactly as though you're hard up. However if you want to be imprisoned before your time there's no reason why I should prevent you!"
"I want to work!" said Millie, then, laughing, she added: "And there seems to be plenty for me to do here!"
Ellen Platt seemed to be suddenly arrested by her laugh. She stared even more closely than she had done before. "Yes, there's plenty of work," she said. "If Victoria will let you do it. If you last out a month here you'll do well."
"Why, what's the matter with it?" asked Millie.
"You can't be very observant if it isn't enough for you to cast a glance around this room and tell yourself what's the matter. But I'll leave you to make your own discoveries. Six years ago we hadn't a penny to bless ourselves with and thought ourselves ill-used. Now we have more money than we know what to do with—or at least Victoria has—and we're worse off than we were before."
She said those words "Or at least Victoria has" with such concentrated anger and bitterness that Millie turned her head away.
"Yes I expect having a lot of money suddenly is a trouble," she said. "I must be getting on with my work."
She moved into the little room; Ellen Platt followed her as though determined to fire her last shot at close quarters.