temporarily engaged her. That was two years ago.

Miss Waring had kept her promise; she was a worker and not a woman. She took pleasure in keeping her wits about her, and Mr. Travers used them as if they were his own. Sometimes he thought they were.

She had many agreeable points besides her wits, but they were the only point she gave to Mr. Travers to notice. She deliberately suppressed her charm. She reduced his work by one half; he never had to say, "You ought to have asked me this," or, "You needn't have brought me that." Her initiative matched her judgment.

It did not occur to Mr. Travers to praise her for this most unusual quality, but he paid her the finest tribute of an efficient worker: he gave her more to do. He woke up to that fact when she tentatively asked him if he could make it convenient for her to leave at five.

"Five," he said, "is your hour for leaving this office. Of course you may go then. You ought always to do so."

A vague smile hovered about Stella's lips; she looked at him consideringly for a moment, her eyes seemed to say, "It must be nice for you, then, that I never do what I ought." Then she drew her secretarial manner like a veil over her face.

"You will find the drainage papers for Stafford Street in the second pigeon-hole on your desk," she said sedately, "with the inspector's report. I have put the plumber's estimate with it, and added a few marginal notes where I think their charges might be cut down."

"You had better see them about it yourself," said Mr. Travers; "then there won't be any unpleasantness."

He did not mean to be polite to Stella; he merely stated a convenient fact. When Stella saw people on business there was no unpleasantness.

Stella bowed, and left him.

Mr. Travers looked up for a moment after she had gone. "I am not sure," he said to himself, "that there are not some things women can do better than men when they do not know that they are doing them better." He did not like to think that women had any superior mental qualities to those of men, but he put them down to mother wit, which does not sound superior.

Stella went through the outer office on wings. It was full of her friends; her exits and her entrances were the events the lesser clerks liked best during the day.

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