ast--in spite of Miss Chapman's
quakings lest Mrs. Gurley should notice the smell when she came
in--and, as they munched, Miss Snodgrass related how she had just
confiscated a book Laura Rambotham was trying to smuggle upstairs, and
how it had turned out that it belonged, not to Laura herself, but to
Lilith Gordon.

"She was like a little spitfire about it all the same. A most
objectionable child, I call her. It was only yesterday I wanted to look
at some embroidery on her apron--a rather pretty new stitch--and do you
think she'd let me see it? She jerked it away and glared at me as if
she would have liked to eat me. I could have boxed her ears."

"I never have any trouble with Laura. I don't think you know how to
manage her," said Miss Chapman, and executed a little manoeuvre. She
had poor teeth; and, having awaited a moment when Miss Snodgrass's
sharp eyes were elsewhere engaged, she surreptitiously dropped the
crusts of the toast into her handkerchief.

"I'd be sorry to treat her as you do," said Miss Snodgrass, and yawned.
"Girls need to be made to sit up nowadays."

She yawned again, and gazing round the room for fresh food for talk,
caught Miss Zielinski with her eye. "Hullo, Ziely, what are you deep
in?" She put her arm round the other's neck, and unceremoniously laid
hold of her book. "You naughty girl, you're at Ouida again! Always got
your nose stuck in some trashy novel."

"DO let me alone," said Miss Zielinski pettishly, holding fast to the
book; but she did not raise her eyes, for they were wet.

"You know you'll count the washing all wrong again to-morrow, your
head'll be so full of that stuff."

"Yes, it's time to go, girls; to-morrow's Saturday." And Miss Chapman
sighed; for, on a Saturday morning between six and eight o'clock,
fifty-five lots of washing had to be sorted out and arranged in piles.

"Holy Moses, what a life!" ejaculated Miss Snodgrass, and yawned again,
in a kind of furious desperation. "I swear I'll marry the first man
that asks me, to get away from it.--As long as he has money enough to
keep me decently."

"You would soon wish yourself back, if you had no more feeling for him
that that," reproved Miss Chapman.

"Catch me! Not even if he had a hump, or kept a mistress, or was over
eighty. Oh dear, oh dear!"--she stretched herself so violently that her
bones cracked; to resume, in a tone of ordinary conversation: "I do
wish I knew whether to put a brown wing or a green one in