The realization that hearts near hers were beating with hope or dread, or sinking with disappointment, was so keen that the heavy air of the place became charged for Win with the electricity of emotion.  She felt what all felt in a strange confusion; and when a stricken face went by, it was she, Winifred Child, who was stricken.  What happened to others suddenly mattered just as much and in exactly the same degree as what might happen to her.  The weight of sadness and weariness pressed upon her.  The smell of unaired clothes and stale, cheap perfumes made her head ache.

“Tired, girlie?” inquired the big young man on whose broad back Win had involuntarily reposed on the way upstairs She was startled at this manner of address, but the brotherly benevolence on the square face under a thick brushwood of blond hair reassured her.  Evidently “girlie” was the right word in the right place.

“Not so very.  Are you?” She felt that conversation would be a relief.  It was intensely cold yet stuffy in the corridor, and time seemed endless.

“Me?  Huh!  Bet yer my place yer can’t guess what my job was up to a month ago.”

He turned a strongly cut profile far over his shoulder, his head pivoting on a great column of throat above a low, loose collar that had a celluloid gleam where the light touched it.  Only one eye and the transparent gleam of another cornea were given to Winifred’s view, but that one green-gray orb was as compelling as a dozen ordinary seeing apparatuses.

“If I guessed what’s in my mind, I’m afraid it would be silly,” said Win.  “You look as if you might be a—­a boxer—­or—–­”

“Or what?”

“Or as if you could train things—­animals, I mean—–­”

“Gee-whittaker!  If she ain’t hit it square in the jaw first round!  Go up ahead, little girl.  This is where I move down one.”

The sardines were now so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked.  The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred’s waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where he had been.

“Good gracious!” she gasped.

“That’s what you get for bein’ a bright child,” he explained “The place is yours.  See?  If Peter Rolls wants only one more hand when your turn comes, you’re it, and I’m left.  I was lion man in Jakes’s and Boon’s show, but my best lion died on me, and that kind o’ got my goat.  Guess my nerve went; and then brutes is as quick as fleas to jump if they feel you don’t know where you are for once.  That shop is shut for yours truly, so I’m doin’ my darnedest to get another.  If Peter Rolls can use me, he can have me dirt cheap.  I want to feed my face again.  It needs it!”

“You give Father one straight look between the eyes,” suggested the sardine, now at his back, “sort of as if he was a lion, and I’d bet my bottom dollar, if I had one, he dasn’t hand you the frosty mitt.”