supper, but let her stay when she saw the dress still unfinished. Now
and then some one would run out of the flat opposite, the flat above or
the flat next door and, popping a head in at the door, wish them good
luck. All the building seemed to know of the crinoline that was being
made in the kitchen.

"You do not smoke a pipe?..." said the dressmaker softly, with
appreciation.

"But none of us do!"

"Oh, pardon, yes! I saw it yesterday. A great big girl dressed like you
with her hands in her pockets and a pipe in her mouth. It made an effect
on me--you can hardly believe how it startled me! I called Madame
Coppet to see."

"I know it wasn't one of us. And (it seems rude of me to say so) I even
think the woman you saw was French."

"Oh, my dear, French women never do that!"

"Well, they do when they get free. They go beyond us in freedom when
they get it The woman you saw (I have seen her, too) works with the men,
shoulder to shoulder, eats with them, smokes with them, drinks with
them, drives all night and all day, and they say she can change a tyre
in two minutes.

"There was a woman, too, who drove a lorry between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc,
not a tender, you know, but a big lorry. She wore a bit of old ermine
round her neck, knickerbockers, and yellow check stockings. One could