"Gee! Get on to the tall Effect in brown!" murmured a voice.
"Ain't she the baby doll?" another voice wanted to know.
Winifred heard, and realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in
question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the
Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was
pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black stones on the
way.
When the cue of tightly packed men and women had advanced along a
corridor on the other side of the doorway, it began mounting a
fireproof staircase. Up and up it went, slowly, steadily rising from
story to story, but it did not spread across the whole width of the
wide, shallow steps. Other men and women, in single file and with no
attention to order, pushed themselves down, the ascending gang
flattening them against the varnished, green wall as they sneaked
hastily past. No one spoke to Win or told her anything (though the big
fellow in front threw her a jovial glance when she trod on his heel,
and she herself ventured a look at the rear sardine), but she knew
somehow that the irregular, descending procession was the defeated
army in flight; those who "would not do.
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