with considerable awe.

When a move was made to the ballroom, Miss Nippett whispered to
Mavis:

"If Mr Poulter wins the great cotillion prize competition 'e's goin'
in for, I 'ope to stand 'Turpsichor' a clean, and a new coat of
paint."

When all three had waited in the ballroom some minutes, the pupils
for the night classes straggled in, the "gentlemen" bringing their
dancing shoes in their overcoat pockets, the "ladies" theirs, either
in net-bags or wrapped in odd pieces of brown paper. These "ladies"
were much of a type, being either shop-girls or lady clerks, with a
sprinkling of maid-servants and board school teachers. They were
pale-faced, hard-working, over-dressed young women who read Marie
Corelli, and considered her "deep"; who had one adjective with which
to express appreciation of things, this "artistic"; anything they
condemned was spoken of as "awful"; one and all liked to be
considered what they called "up-to-date." Marriage they desired more
than anything else in the world, not so much that they wished to
live in an atmosphere of affection, but because they believed that
state promised something of a respite from their never-ending,
poorly recompensed toil. The "gentlemen" were mostly shopmen or
weekly paid clerks with social aspirations; they carried silver
cigarette cases, which they exhibited on the least provocation.

Mavis played, whilst Mr Poulter put the pupils through their steps.
She had no eyes for the dancers, these not interesting her; her
attention, of which she had plenty to spare, was fixed upon the