In one respect at least the change was not altogether for the better, for, bad as the rumble of the machines at Endell Street had been, Hallowell's mammoth rebuilding, which included much throwing down of old walls amid eruptions of lime and dust, and the running day and night of a crane the top of which lost itself in the blue air, was worse. These activities shook the whole fabric of the place, playing the very deuce with Torchon and Valenciennes. But in every other respect the change was not only an improvement, but the Fashion Studio now stood in the full stream of general developments. It only needed a time-serving, and, for choice, a feminine mind, and there was no telling what might not happen.
To reach the upper room where the seven or eight girls worked, you had to pass from the lift along a long concrete-floored corridor and then through a large outer room that was one of the sitting-rooms of Hallowell's "living-in" female employees. Of the fashion-drawing factory Miss Porchester was head. She herself went out in the mornings to shops and warehouses to sketch, sometimes taking as many as a dozen buses and cabs in the course of a single morning; and in the afternoon she returned with, the fruits of her wanderings--or, rather, with the seeds, for they were yet to grow and ripen marvellously. Fat Miss Benson took them in hand first. With a foot-rule by her side for checking, lest there should be too much even of a good thing, she roughed in those elongated and fish-like figures which, if you would see them in normal proportion, you must squint at aslant up the tilted page. Then Miss Hurst or blonde Miss Umpleby took over the drawing, further developing the Tea-gown or the Walking Costume, or the lady in her corsets riding in a motor car, or whatever it might be. From them it passed to Miss Smedley or Miss Cowan, who worked it up with lamp-black or Chinese-white or what not, for Miss Ruffell to put in the faces, large-eyed and soulful. Dorothy measured and squared the production, gave a last look to see that the fish-like ideal had not been lost in its progress from hand to hand and that there was nothing else that might start a young man on the downward path, and put a line round it if a line was needed. Pigtailed little Smithie affixed the protecting piece of tissue-paper. It was finished.