ittlish girl--yellow hair, you know--one of them that look as
if they didn't weigh half-a-stone.'

'I'll throw this parsnip at you, Mr. Snowdon!'

'What's up now. You don't Call yourself littlish, do you?'

Clem snapped the small end off the vegetable she was paring, and aimed
it at his head. He ducked just in time. Then there was an outburst of
laughter from both.

'Say, Clem, you haven't got a glass of beer in the house?'

'You'll have to wait till openin' time,' replied the girl sourly, going
away to the far end of the room.

'Have I offended you, Clem?'

'Offended, indeed As if I cared what you say!'

'Do you care what I think?'

'Not I!'

'That means you do. Say, Clem, just come here; I've something to tell
you.'

'You're a nuisance. Let me get on with my work, can't you?'

'No, I can't. You just come here. You'd better not give me the trouble
of fetching you!'

The girl obeyed him. Her cheeks were very hot, and the danger-signal
was flashing in her eyes. Ten minutes later she went upstairs, and had
a vivacious dialogue of whispers with Mrs. Peckover.

CHAPTER XV

SUNLIGHT IN DREARY PLACES

Among the by-ways of Clerkenwell you might, with some difficulty, have
discovered an establishment known in its neighbourhood as
'Whitehead's.' It was an artificial-flower factory, and the rooms of
which it consisted were only to be reached by traversing a timber-yard,
and then mounting a wooden staircase outside a saw-mill. Here at busy
seasons worked some threescore women and girls, who, owing to the
nature of their occupation, were spoken of by the jocose youth of the
locality as 'Whitehead's pastepots.'

Naturally they varied much in age and aspect. There was the child who
had newly left school, and was now invited to consider the question of
how to keep herself alive; there was the woman of uncertain age, who
had spent long years of long days in the atmosphere of workrooms, and
showed the result in her parchmenty cheek and lack-lustre eye; and
between these extremes came all the various types of the London
crafts-girl: she who is young enough to hope that disappointments may
yet be made up for by the future; she who is already tasting such
scanty good as life had in store for her; she who has outlived her
illusions and no longer cares to look beyond the close of the week. If
regularly engaged as time-workers, they made themselves easy in the
prospect of wages that allowed them to sleep under a r