Page:Our Girls.pdf/46

 seems almost tenderly proper to female hands.

But if such work makes less demand of robustious strength, it requires equal conscientiousness. Here is a young girl examining caps. Out of a boxful on the bench before her she scoops up as many as will drop into the holes of a small tray which is perforated like a colander. Then with a needle she flicks off, faster than the eye can follow her, the caps that have a scratch, a dot, a dent or such other defect as might prevent percussion. She works by the piece, receiving fivepence for each boxful. So small is the cap, and so buried will it presently be in the brass top of the cartridge, that if she scamps her work nobody may ever know—nobody, except the soldier at the front, when he is, perhaps, face to face with his enemy, and finds his rifle fail him after he has pulled the trigger. But the girl knows that, and she knows, too, that the soldier who may fall at the next instant under the enemy's more certain