and Miss Murray, who sat next to Miss Thornton, suspected that it
had had something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss
Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so
uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and
attacked her work with unusual briskness.

Next to friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle,
a large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes,
and a bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in
her manner, from a sense of superiority. She was connected, she
stated frequently, with one of the wealthy families of the city,
whose old clothes, the girls suspected, she frequently wore. On
Saturday, a half-day, upon which all the girls wore their best
clothes to the office, if they had matinee or shopping plans for the
afternoon, Miss Cottle often appeared with her frowsy hair bunched
under a tawdry velvet hat, covered with once exquisite velvet roses,
and her muscular form clad in a gown that had cost its original
owner more than this humble relative could earn in a year. Miss
Cottle's gloves were always expensive, and always dirty, and her
elaborate silk petticoats were of soiled pale pinks and blues.

Miss Cottle's neighbor was Miss Sherman, a freckled, red-headed,
pale little girl, always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent,
and hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression--or would have
given it to anyone who cared to study her--of having been
intimidated and underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor,
and, when Susan Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally
did, Miss Sherman would laugh so violently, and with such agonized
attempts at suppression, that she would almost strangle herself.
Nobody guessed that she adored the brilliant Susan, unless Miss