Page:Our Girls.pdf/83

 girl is Tommy's own sister, with the same humour, and the same tameless blood in her. Here she comes sailing into the superintendent's office, Tommy's sister, one of her many varieties, wearing a hat as big as a fish-basket, and with her pretty face painted red as the sun with rouge. Then follows a scene. "Helloa, what do you want?" "Work, miss." "You couldn't work." "Couldn't I? Just you try me, miss," and up goes the chin, with a curl of the saucy mouth. There is silence for a moment, and then the superintendent says, "Now that I look at you I don't think you would be a bad-looking girl if you hadn't such a dirty face." "What? Dirty fice? Me?" "Yes, all that red stuff. And then that hat!" "Is it as bad as all that, miss?" "Awful! Go and take it off and have a wash, and then perhaps we can do something."

Tommy's sister in the munition factories, like Tommy in the trenches, lives in the last moment, now joking, teasing,