along corridor again for locker room, but sudden wavering pause at
sight of confused group: half-fainting girl in black being handed over
to capped and aproned nurse by two youths at an open door, glimpse of
iron bedsteads etched in black against varnished white wall, door shut
with slap; youths marching light heartedly away, keeping time to the
subdued whistle of "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee."

Girls sometimes faint here, then, before ten o'clock in the morning!
And quite a matter of course to shed them in the hospital room,
otherwise one wouldn't try one's tango steps going away. But never
mind; laugh first, or the world will! Life easier for Peter Rolls's
hands as well as other people if they can live it in ragtime. Your
turn to fall to-day. Mine to-morrow. "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee!"
And whatever you may think, don't lose a minute.

Winifred did not. Perhaps she, too, was beginning to think in ragtime.
She was telling her number to the doorkeeper of the locker room as the
slap of the hospital door ceased to vibrate through the long corridor
on the eighth story.

The locker room had countless rows of narrow cells with iron gratings
for doors; and the gimlet gaze of two stalwart young females pierced
each newcomer. It was their business to see that Peter Rolls's hands
did not pilfer each other's belongings. The gimlet eyes must note the
outdoor clothing each girl wore on arrival, in order to be sure that
she did not go forth at evening clad in the property of a comrade.
Being paid to cultivate suspicion had soured the guardian angels'
tempers. One had a novel by Laura Jean Libbey, the other an
old-fashioned tale by Mary J. Holmes, to while away odd minutes of
leisure; but it appealed to the imagination of neither that any or all
of the girls flitting in and out might be eligible heroines for their
favourite authors, stolen at birth from parent millionaires,
qualifying through pathetic struggles with poverty to become the
brides of other millionaires, or, perhaps, to win an earl or duke.

All the regularly engaged hands had long ago shut up their hats and
cloaks in prison and gone about their business. It was only the extras
who were arriving at this late hour to show their numbers and claim
their lockers. There were comparatively few amateurs. Most of the
girls had had shop experience, but greenhorns betrayed ignorance as
they entered. To them, shortly and succinctly, were explained the
rules: the system