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STUMPY.

UNLESS one happens to be familiar with the neighbourhood, 'Digby Buildings, Clock Street, Bloomsbury,' is an address difficult to find. In itself the word Bloomsbury is misleading, for, naturally, one would penetrate the numerous squares and streets of the district patronised by students and Americans seeing London ' on the cheap.' But Clock Street is not to be found in this semifashionable part; it is off Upper Wardle Street, and Upper Wardle Street leads to Tottenham Court Road. However, once in Upper Wardle Street it is not easy to pass Clock Street by unnoticed, for the County Council has painted the name in large white letters on the corner of Digby Buildings themselves, and when the street is found the Buildings are found also.

There are in Clock Street a few old-fashioned houses, now let out in tenements, with wide steps leading to Adams-fronted doors, which steps accommodate the small fry of the Buildings. There are two or three blank-walled printing establishments; there is a small pickle factory, the fumes of whose vinegar flavour Clock Street by night and day; there is a catsmeat vendor-wholesale; a news-shop, whose sole ambition is to announce murders, executions, and general disasters in as attractive a manner as possible; an oilshop with a window full of bar soap and tinned salmon; and Digby Buildings, a yellow-bricked block, with a curling stone staircase opening to the street.

Half way up the Building, at the end of a stone passage, a door, with Miss S. Short' written with an amateur's attempt at printing, attracted the attention. Underneath the name

was written Typist,' and beneath that a small denizen of the Building had scratched the word 'Stumpy.' Though there had evidently been some attempt to efface the epithet by scrubbing, success had not attended the effort; the letters were deeply scratched into the putty-coloured paint, and when the afternoon sun fell on the door Stumpy' showed as boldly as the lady's name above it.

It was not yet half-past seven and only the semblance of morning was coming through the fog-laden atmosphere. The paraffin lamp in Sarah Short's room was not burning brightly; she had only

filled it, not trimmed it, when she arose before six to work at the typewriter standing at the foot of the bed. Now she was bending over it, not for warmth, but to make sure that the words in the letter she had just read were really written, not a figment of her active brain.

She turned up the lamp and read again :

Miss Ellaline De Vere.

DEAR MADAM,-We beg to inform you that the competition for 'The best design for an evening gown,' offered by us in The Princess' of January 10, has been won by you. We have pleasure in telling you that, although the competition brought us in hundreds of designs, Madame Sylvestre, of Bond Street, to whom they were submitted, has pronounced in favour of the one you sent in. As you are aware, the prize is the winning design to be made to measure by Madame Sylvestre at a cost of not less than £25 and not exceeding £35. Madame Sylvestre will be pleased to see you at your earliest convenience. Enclosed order, signed by the editor, must be presented.-Yours truly, THE EDITOR (pro).

Miss Short sat down on the edge of her bed and tittered; she could not laugh outright, the situation was too full of irony. To cost not less than twenty-five pounds and not exceeding thirtyfive. Oh, my!' she exclaimed aloud, and then, as there seemed nothing else to say, she repeated 'Oh, my!' But she fell to thinking. If I could but have the money I could buy myself a good second-hand Remington, instead of paying five shillings a week for the hire of that old thing, and then have enough to get myself a new walking-out costume. But an evening gown! Why was the competition for an evening dress?' The flush of victory, which for a moment had painted her cheeks, faded away, and the tears of disappointment trickled from her cheeks into the cup of unmixed cocoa she was holding.

At that moment Sarah Short, had she been asked to describe her costume, would have pronounced herself en déshabillé. Her skirt was hitched round her waist and held together by one hook and eye; over her stays and bodice she had pinned a shawl which, like the boy's almond-drop, was pink once,' but from nany washings had taken a nondescript tone. The room was comfortless and untidy a mixture of MSS. and meals lay on the table; bedclothes hung half on and half off the bed; the ashes were piled high in an unlit fireplace. Providence had not been kind to the girl she was short by stature as well as name-so short, indeed, that, when seated on the office stool she used when working the typewriter, she needed an upturned soap-box to rest her feet upon.

She had always preferred' a profession' to trade, which, considering her appearance, was no doubt the more excellent choice; yet she had been born to a small general grocer in Clapham, whose bankruptcy had driven her to the 'profession' of typist in Digby Buildings. She admired tall, elegant women of the best American type, yet Providence had made her four foot nine and nicknamed 'Stumpy.'

Yet in moments of hallucination snatched from the duplicating of sale catalogues, the work that fell mostly to her typewriter, Sarah could see herself grown tall and prepossessing, could see herself with auburn hair and costumed by Paquin, whirling round in some fashionable ballroom or walking up the marble staircase at an ambassador's reception. The costumes her brain sketched, and in which she arrayed herself, were her delight. It was this aptitude of throwing herself into other spheres that had brought about the present situation. Miss Ellaline De Vere had been bidden to a very smart function and Miss Ellaline De Vere required a costume for the occasion. The rare times that Sally could afford the sixpence, she would buy The Princess,' and revel in its most exclusive fashions, and it was with the idea of letting its subscribers participate in the joys of Miss De Vere's new gown that she had sent a design to the monthly competition. In the annoyances of duplicating a catalogue of 'startling reductions,' dear at any price on their intrinsic merits, according to Sally's ideas, she had forgotten all about it, and now here was she confronted with the possession of an evening gown-needed only in dream moments-with nowhere to wear it and with an ill-shapen body to put it on.

That ill-shapen body-how painfully at times was Sarah conscious of it! Only yesterday a lady who lived on her landing, when consulting her as to the purchase of a Sunday garment, had intimated that though she liked a bit of colour with plenty of tabs and bright buttons down the skirt-'a good show of trimming always looks moneyed, even if you aren't '-it was natural that Sarah, with a figure like hers, as can't stand much in the trimming line,' should like those long, plain, clinging skirts on which she would always insist. But I have a figure as you can load up a bit,' the woman had added proudly, and she had gone to seek ideas in a more promising quarter.

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Sunday, when it was fine and during the season, was a redletter day for Sally. At about half-past eleven, household duties

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done, she would, as it were, project herself into her other self. Then she would become Miss Ellaline De Vere. She would close her eyes, for half an hour would work herself into a kind of trance, when she would wake up and put on her one and only Sunday frock. It was but blue serge, worn for four seasons, but, with the pretence assumed, she would imagine it a new creation every Sunday. "Ah!' she would exclaim, 'yes, as it is fine I will wear the biscuit cloth with the galon vest that Madame Clothilde sent home last week. Now, what sunshade? My coffee lace? Or, let me see, if I wear the large black hat from Gainsborough's with the pink roses under the brim, I might use the rose chiffon sunshade with the enamel handle. Gloves now-white kid or those exquisite tan suèdes with the rucked arms? The tan, I think. Yes, and the white lace petticoat made with the cream silk lining would be suitable,' and with her cotton umbrella under her arm, working a pair of old gloves down her fingers, Miss Ellaline De Vere, no longer Stumpy, of four foot nine, but grown to five foot eleven, sailed down the stairs of Digby Buildings arrayed, in her mind, to perfection.

Half-past twelve would find her in the Park, there to spend a penny, and an hour, admiring the finest-dressed women of the Empire. Yet even here her taste at times received a shock. 'Oh dear!' she would exclaim, there's that Miss Hobbs, the banker's daughter. Why can't she understand that a blonde should never wear unrelieved maize? And, oh, my dear Countess of Blickford, why did not Providence give you an eye for colour? Can't you see that that pink crêpe of yours is just two shades on the light side? I know what you were trying for, but you have missed it as usual. Ah, now, look at the Russian princess! Nothing British about that tone of pink; Paquin written all over it. So plain yet so commanding. I must make a mental note of it; I think even I can accept that hint.' She would project her mind a day or two further in the week, and in a fashion paper in the free library she would be reading, 'Miss Ellaline De Vere was seen in the Park last Sunday gowned to perfection in biscuit cloth. It is difficult to say when she entered into conversation with the Princess Ivanovitch which of these two chic ladies showed to the greater advantage.' Stumpy would smile to herself, and, elated with her success, would return to Digby Buildings, there, like Cinderella, to see her fine garments once more become the worn-out serge and the sunbleached hat of daily life.

But this affair of the prize was a very serious matter. If it had only been a walking-out dress, or the thing known as an afternoon gown-something, say, at £7 10s.-what a marvellous bit of luck to have won it! And then to have taken the rest of the prize in cash, cash which would have allowed the purchase of a typewriter and have spared that crippling payment of five shillings a week which would for ever keep her poor. Sarah began instantly to picture all the pleasures that a spare five shillings a week can procure for its possessor. The pit of a theatre, with the gorgeous costumes on the stage and the ladies in the boxes; a friend to tea at an A.B.C. shop, and cream in the tea; a bold entry of the oilshop and the acquisition of one of those tins of salmon which, with a twopenny cucumber, made so insistent an appeal to her sense of the right thing in food-all these delights were within the purchasing power of five shillings. The girl sat on the bed, swinging her short legs, while the tears trickled down her cheeks. She had not yet half exhausted the list of pleasures. There was a bit of real lamb and a lettuce on Sundays, with mint sauce the latter delicacy was the more easily imagined because the pickle factory had just started its day's work and the smell of boiling vinegar was coming through the open window. And then, if she saved the whole five shillings for four weeks till it became a pound, she might know the joy of a week's holiday: she might be able to go down into the country, a long way past Wimbledon, and sit in a real wood and pick real primroses, and listen to singing of other birds than the wretched caged larks patronised by the dwellers in Digby Buildings.

At this, the culminating point of her disappointment, Sally Short broke into loud weeping. It is too bad!' she exclaimed. 'I wish I'd never gone in for the competition, let alone winning of the prize. What's the use of a thirty-pound evening dress when they don't as much as give a party to wear it at!' She threw the editor's letter on the table in disgust and mechanically opened another which, in the late excitement, she had overlooked. She read it, and it had the effect of bringing her back to every-day affairs, for it ran :

If Miss Short cannot let us have the 500 duplicated sale announcements (ordered a week ago) by twelve o'clock to-morrow, she must cease to expect any more orders from us. Our business cannot wait in this manner.

PROSSER & SONS.

'Heavens! and I've fifty odd to do,' and Sally hastily resumed

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