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among the other girls in the shop with their flat chests and
anaemic faces. Mildred suffered from anaemia.
After a time it appeared that Sally had a suitor. She went
out occasionally with friends she had made in the work-
room, and had met a young man, an electrical engineer in
a very good way of business, who was a most eligible per-
son. One day she told her mother that he had asked her to
marry him.
‘What did you say?’ said her mother.
‘Oh, I told him I wasn’t over-anxious to marry anyone
just yet awhile.’ She paused a little as was her habit between
observations. ‘He took on so that I said he might come to
tea on Sunday.’
It was an occasion that thoroughly appealed to Athelny.
He rehearsed all the afternoon how he should play the heavy
father for the young man’s edification till he reduced his
children to helpless giggling. Just before he was due Athelny
routed out an Egyptian tarboosh and insisted on putting it
on.
‘Go on with you, Athelny,’ said his wife, who was in her
best, which was of black velvet, and, since she was growing
stouter every year, very tight for her. ‘You’ll spoil the girl’s
chances.’
She tried to pull it off, but the little man skipped nimbly
out of her way.
‘Unhand me, woman. Nothing will induce me to take it
off. This young man must be shown at once that it is no or-
dinary family he is preparing to enter.’
‘Let him keep it on, mother,’ said Sally, in her even, indif-

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