“Hullo, Rolfe! What are you up for?”
Marion flushed slightly, and answered:
“I—I hardly know.”
“Well, I’m going in for a rise, and if the guv’nor don’t give it to me I’m going to Westoby’s to-morrow. I’ve got a good crib there. My young man is shop-walker, so I’ll get on like a house on fire.”
“Westoby’s is a lot better than here,” remarked a pale-faced male assistant. “I was there for a sale once. I only wish they’d have kept me.”
“I’ve heard that the food is wretched,” remarked Marion, for the sake of something to say.
“It isn’t good,” declared the young man, “but the girls get lots more freedom. They do as they like almost. Old Westoby don’t care, as long as the business pays. It’s a public company, like this, but they do a bit lower-class trade, which means more ‘spiffs.’”
“I haven’t made a quid this last three months out of ‘spiffs’,” declared the ribbon-girl. “That’s why I want a rise.”
Marion smiled within herself, for beyond the glass partition were quite a dozen girls, all of them young, several quite good-looking, waiting to see if any berths were vacant, and ready that very hour to take the ribbon-girl’s place—and hers.
Every girl who came up to London went first to Cunnington’s, for the assistants there were declared to be of better class than those of the other drapery houses that jostle each other on the north side of Oxford Street.