“People don’t like things they don’t want pushed under their noses,” I said. “It always annoys me.”
“Of course they don’t,” she agreed. “Again, if we’re late, only five minutes, in the morning when we go in to dust, we’re fined sixpence; if one of the shop-walkers owes any girl a grudge he will fine her a shilling for talking during business, and if she allows a customer to go out without buying anything and without calling his attention to it, she has to pay half-a-crown. People don’t think when they enter a shop and are met by a suave man in frock-coat who hands them a chair and calls an assistant, that this very man is watching whether the unfortunate counter-slave will break any of the code of rules, so that the instant the customer has gone she may be fined, with an added warning that if a similar thing again occurs she will be dismissed.”
“In no other trade would men and women conform to such rules,” I exclaimed, for she had often told me of these things before. “Who takes the fines?”
“The firm, of course,” she answered. “They’re supposed to go towards the library; but the latter consists of only about fifty worn-out, tattered books which haven’t been added to for the past three years.”
“I don’t wonder that such an existence should crush all life from you. It’s enough to render any one old before their time, slaving away in that place from morning till night, without even sufficient time for your meals. But why are you a favourite?” I asked.
She looked at me for an instant, then dropped her eyes and remained silent.
“I scarcely know,” she faltered at last, and I scented in her indecision an element of mystery.
“But you must be aware of the reason that you are not treated quite as harshly as the others.”
“Well,” she laughed, a slight flush mounting to her cheek, “it may be because of my friendliness towards the shop-walker.”
“The shop-walker!” I exclaimed in surprise, not without some jealous resentment rising within me. “Why are you friendly towards him?”