" She wondered if she should
be among them after a few hours of vain waiting and standing on her
feet.
Seven flights of stairs she counted, and then she and those in front
and behind debouched into a corridor much longer than that at the
entrance on the ground floor.
"They might have shot us up in the customers' lifts!" snapped the
sardine who had just detached herself from Winifred's spine. "'Twould
have saved their time and our tempers."
"They don't spend money putting up fireproof staircases for nothing,"
mumbled a voice over the sardine's shoulder. "They want to give us a
free exhibition of an emergency exit. But it'll be the only thing we
ever will get free here."
"Except maybe the sack--or the bounce," tittered the sardine.
There was something likable about that sardine. Win felt drawn to her,
which was fortunate in the circumstances.
Nearer and nearer they approached, with a kind of shuffle step, to an
office whose whole front consisted of window. This window was raised,
and electric light streaming out brightened that distant end of the
otherwise economically lit corridor. The advance guard of would-be
hands stepped one at a time in front of a counter which took the place
of a window ledge.
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