Though nobody had noticed it, this girl had been in trouble for the last five minutes.  The presence of the visitors, or of the superintendent, had evidently made her nervous; she kept looking half-around out of the darting corners of her eyes.  Three times, as the men watched and talked about her, she had raised a hand in the heat and brushed it hurriedly before her eyes.  And then, just as the superintendent turned from her and all would have been well again, her overdrawn nerve gave out.  The hands became suddenly limp on the machine they knew so well; they slid backward, at first slowly and then with the speed of a falling body; and poor Miller slipped quietly from her stool to the floor, her head actually brushing the lady’s skirt as she fell.

Cally stifled a little cry.  Hugo, obvious for once, said, “Why, she’s fainted!”—­in an incredulous voice.  Considerably better in action were the experienced Works people.  MacQueen sprang for a water-bucket with a celerity which strongly suggested practice.  A stout, unstayed buncher filled a long-felt want by flinging open a window.  One from a neighboring machine sat on the floor, Miller’s head on her lap.  Two others stood by....

Carlisle, holding to the silenced machine with a small gloved hand, gazed down as at a bit of stage-play.

They had formed a screen about the fallen girl, under MacQueen’s directions, to cut her off from the general view.  The superintendent’s gaze swept critically about.  However, the sudden confusion had drawn the attention of all that part of the room, and concealment proved a too optimistic hope.  The moment happened to be ripe for one of those curious panics of the imagination to which crowded womanhood is psychologically subject.  Knowledge that somebody was down ran round the room as if it had been shouted; and on the knowledge, fear stalked among the tired girls, and the thing itself was born of the dread of it.

So it was that Carlisle, gripping fast to poor Miller’s machine, heard an odd noise behind her, and turned with a sickening dropping of the heart.  Five yards away a girl gave a little moan and flopped forward upon her machine.  She was a fine, strapping young creature, and it is certain that two minutes before nothing had been further from her mind than fainting.  It did not stop there.  Far up the room a “wrapper” rose in the dense air, took her head in both hands and fell backward into the arms of the operative next her.  In the extreme corner of the great room a little stir indicated that another had gone down there.  Work had almost ceased.  Many eyes stared with sudden nervous apprehension into other eyes, as if to say:  “Am I to be the next?...”

MacQueen’s voice rang out—­a fine voice it was, the kind that makes people sit down again in a fire-scared theatre: 

“Take your seats, every one of you....  Nothing’s going to happen.  You’re all right, I say.  Go on with your work. Sit down.  Get to work....”