Miss Hender, Kate's assistant, was one of Mrs. Ede's particular dislikes.
Of her moral character Mrs. Ede had the gravest doubts; for what could be
expected, she often muttered, of a person who turned up her nose when she
was asked to stay and attend evening prayers, and who kept company with a
stage carpenter?

Mrs. Ede did not cease talking of Hender till the girl herself came in,
with many apologies for being an hour behind her time, and saying that she
really could not help it; her sister had been very ill, and she had been
obliged to sit up with her all night. Mrs. Ede smiled at this explanation,
and withdrew, leaving Kate in doubt as to the truth of the excuse put
forward by her assistant; but remembering that Mrs. Barnes's dress had been
promised for Tuesday morning, she said:

'Come, we're wasting all the morning; we must get on with Mrs. Barnes's
dress,' and a stout, buxom, carroty-haired girl of twenty followed Kate
upstairs, thinking of the money she might earn and of how she and the stage
carpenter might spend it together. She was always full of information
concerning the big red house in Queen Street. She was sure that the hours
in the workroom would not seem half so long if Kate would wake up a bit, go
to the play, and chat about what was going on in the town. How anyone could
live with that horrid old woman always hanging about, with her religion and
salvation, was beyond her. She hadn't time for such things, and as for
Bill, he said it was all 'tommy-rot.'

Hender was an excellent workwoman, although a lazy girl, and, seeing from
Kate's manner that the time had not come for conversation, applied herself
diligently to her business. Placing the two side-seams and the back under
the needle, she gave the wheel a turn, and rapidly the little steel needle