ing your
blouse, that these travellers in trains would never hear your name or
know who you were.

As for a bath--but then the great, magnificent advantage of living at
Mrs. McFarrell's was the bathroom. It was dark and small and smelled
of the black beetles who lived happily around the hot-water pipes. You
were not expected to take more than one bath a week, and for that one
bath towel was provided free.

"Oh, I thought you'd _had_ your bath this week!" was the answer Win
got on her second night, when mildly asking for a towel which had
disappeared. But if you were silly enough to pay thirty cents extra
for putting water on your body every day, you could do so. And, anyhow
a bathroom was a splendid advertisement. One lodger told another:
"The use of the bathroom is thrown in."

That night, when Win had bathed and laid herself carefully down in the
narrow bed which shook and groaned as if suffering from palsy, it
seemed more impossible than ever to go to sleep. Each new train that
rumbled by was a giant, homing bee, her brain the hive for which it
aimed. Her hot head was crowded with thoughts, disturbing, fighting,
struggling thoughts, yet the giant bee pushed the throng ruthlessly
aside and darted in. Each time it seemed impossible to bear it again.
She felt as if she had caterpillars in her spine and ants on her
nerves.

Win thought about the superintendent, Mr. Meggison, and wondered again
and again whether she would be discharged or whether he had merely
"taken a fancy" to her looks and wished to see if she were
flirtatiously inclined. She knew now, from Sadie, that Meggison's
desire was to be a "gay dog," though his courage did not always march
with his ambition.

The red-haired girl, Sadie supposed, had perhaps come to the Hands
armed with an introduction from some "lady friend." This theory would
account for Meggison's mysterious murmur of, "That's different." What
should she--Win--do if Father invited her to dine with him, as it
seemed he did invite some of the girls? Sadie said that if such a
thing happened to her she would accept, because she wasn't afraid of
Father. She "could scare him more than he could scare her," and an
extra hand might "get the push" if she refused a civil invitation.

With Mr. Croft, "Saint Peter's Understudy," it was more dangerous. You
had to beware of him. If you were a "looker," like Win, the best
thing that could happen to you was never to come within eyeshot of
Henry Crof