Then Angela made them a speech. She said, handling a racket to give herself confidence, that it was highly necessary to take plenty of exercise in the open air; that she was sure work would be better done and more quickly done if the fingers did not get too tired; therefore, that she had had this tennis-court prepared for them and the gymnasium fitted up, so that they might play in it every day. And then selecting Nelly and two others, who seemed active young creatures, she gave them their first lesson in lawn tennis.
The next day she gave a lesson to another set. In a few days tennis became a passion with the girls. The fashion spread. Lawn tennis is not an expensive game; shortly there will be no bit of square garden or vacant space in Stepney but will be marked out into its lawn-tennis courts.
The gymnasium took longer to become popular. Girls do not like feats of strength; nor was it until the spell of wet weather last October, when outdoor games became impossible, that the gymnasium began to attract at all. Then a spirit of emulation was set up, and bodily exercises became popular. After becoming quite sure that no deduction was made on account of the resting time, the girls ceased to be suspicious, and accepted the gift with something like enthusiasm. Yet, Miss Kennedy was their employer; therefore, a natural enemy; therefore, gifts from her continued, for some time, to be received with doubt and suspicion. This does not seem, on the whole, a healthy outcome of our social system; yet such an attitude is unfortunately common among work-girls.
At half-past eleven they all resumed work.
At one o'clock another astonishment awaited them.
Miss Kennedy informed them that one of the reforms introduced by her was the providing of dinner every day, without deducting anything from their wages. Those to whom dinner was, on most days, the mockery of a piece of bread and butter, or a bun, or some such figment and pretence of a meal, simply gasped, and the stoutest held her breath for a while, wondering what these things might mean.
Yes, there was dinner laid for them upstairs on a fair white cloth; for every girl a plentiful dish of beef with potatoes and other good things, and a glass of Messenger's Family Ale—that at eight-and-six the nine-gallon cask—and bread à discrétion. Angela would have added pudding, but was dissuaded by her forewoman, on the ground that not only would pudding swallow up too much of the profits, but that it would demoralize the girls. As it was, one of them, at the mere aspect and first contemplation of the beef, fell a-weeping. She was lame, and she was the most dejected among them all. Why she wept, and how Angela followed her home, and what that home was like, and why she and her mother and her sisters do now continually praise and pray for Angela, belong to another story, concerned with the wretchedness and misery which are found at Whitechapel and Stepney, as well as in Soho and Marylebone and the back of Regent Street. I shall not write many chapters of that story, for my own part.
Truly a most wonderful workshop. Was ever such an association of dressmakers?
After dinner they frolicked and romped, though as yet in an untaught way, until two, when they began work again.
Miss Kennedy then made them another speech.