“It doesn’t seem to depress her spirits,” mused Joan.

“Oh, she!  She’s all right,” agreed the girl.  “Having the time of her life:  someone to look after for twenty-four hours a day that can’t help themselves.”

She examined Joan awhile in silence.  “Are you on the stage?” she asked.

“No,” answered Joan.  “But my mother was.  Are you?”

“Thought you looked a bit like it,” said the girl.  “I’m in the chorus.  It’s better than being in service or in a shop:  that’s all you can say for it.”

“But you’ll get out of that,” suggested Joan.  “You’ve got the actress face.”

The girl flushed with pleasure.  It was a striking face, with intelligent eyes and a mobile, sensitive mouth.  “Oh, yes,” she said, “I could act all right.  I feel it.  But you don’t get out of the chorus.  Except at a price.”

Joan looked at her.  “I thought that sort of thing was dying out,” she said.

The girl shrugged her shoulders.  “Not in my shop,” she answered.  “Anyhow, it was the only chance I ever had.  Wish sometimes I’d taken it.  It was quite a good part.”

“They must have felt sure you could act,” said Joan.  “Next time it will be a clean offer.”

The girl shook her head.  “There’s no next time,” she said; “once you’re put down as one of the stand-offs.  Plenty of others to take your place.”

“Oh, I don’t blame them,” she added.  “It isn’t a thing to be dismissed with a toss of your head.  I thought it all out.  Don’t know now what decided me.  Something inside me, I suppose.”

Joan found herself poking the fire.  “Have you known Mary Stopperton long?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” answered the girl.  “Ever since I’ve been on my own.”

“Did you talk it over with her?” asked Joan.

“No,” answered the girl.  “I may have just told her.  She isn’t the sort that gives advice.”

“I’m glad you didn’t do it,” said Joan:  “that you put up a fight for all women.”

The girl gave a short laugh.  “Afraid I wasn’t thinking much about that,” she said.

“No,” said Joan.  “But perhaps that’s the way the best fights are fought—­without thinking.”

Mary peeped round the door.  She had been lucky enough to find the doctor in.  She disappeared again, and they talked about themselves.  The girl was a Miss Ensor.  She lived by herself in a room in Lawrence Street.

“I’m not good at getting on with people,” she explained.

Mary joined them, and went straight to Miss Ensor’s bag and opened it.  She shook her head at the contents, which consisted of a small, flabby-looking meat pie in a tin dish, and two pale, flat mince tarts.

“It doesn’t nourish you, dearie,” complained Mary.  “You could have bought yourself a nice bit of meat with the same money.”

“And you would have had all the trouble of cooking it,” answered the girl.  “That only wants warming up.”