"Quietly at first."
"Then you'll want a matter of one or two dressmakers, and half a dozen improvers. The apprentices will come later."
"What are the general wages in this part of London?"
"The dressmakers get sixteen shillings a week; the improvers six. They bring their own dinners, and you give them their tea. But, of course, you know all that."
"Of course," said Angela, making a note of the fact, notwithstanding.
"As for one of your dressmakers, I can recommend you Rebekah Hermitage, daughter of the Rev. Percival Hermitage. She cannot get a situation, because of her father's religious opinions."
"That seems strange. What are they?"
"Why, he's minister of the Seventh-Day Independents. They've got a chapel in Redman's Row; they have their services on Saturday because, they say—and it seems true—that the Fourth Commandment has never been abolished any more than the rest of them. I wonder the bishops don't take it up. Well, there it is. On Saturdays she won't work, and on Sundays she don't like to, because the other people don't."
"Has she any religious objection," asked Angela, "to working on Monday and Tuesday?"
"No; and I'll send her over, Miss Kennedy, this evening, if you will see her. You'll get her cheap, because no one else will have her. Very good. Then there is Nelly Sorensen. I know she would like to go out, but her father is particular. Not that he's any right to be, being a pauper. If a man like me or the late Mr. Messenger, my friend, chooses to be particular, it's nothing but right. As for Captain Sorensen—why, it's the pride after the fall, instead of before it. Which makes it, to a substantial man, sickenin'."