“Ah, yesterday! But I shall have some more money—now.”

“What?—and you never told me when you came in? What, have Waters and Son actually given you a rise?”

“Supplementary duties,” I explained briefly, drawing a wooden chair up beside Cicely’s couch and laying a clean towel over it for a tablecloth before I set down the plate of ham-scramble. “Pretty well-paid, too. Yes. I got the job to-day. And,” I concluded with resolution, “I begin it to-morrow.”

[29]

[29]

CHAPTER IV ACCEPTED!

ACCEPTED!

“And when do you think the ‘engagement’ had better be announced? At once?”

This was what the Governor said to me this morning when I again presented myself at his desk; this time with the timid “acceptance” which, after poor Jack’s desperate appeal, is my only alternative.

“At once?” I gasped. “Oh, but—How could it? The—well—people would think it so”—I checked a hysterical laugh—“so funny!”

“Funny? What’s funny about it?” took up the Governor, as sharply as if he didn’t see anything at all odd in the whole situation. But he does. He must! What a hateful trick men have of pretending they’re not pretending—when you’re unable to prove, in so many words, that they are! People talk about women being more complicated; good gracious! It’s we who are simple and straightforward. What[30] was I to make of the Governor, when he asked me, in quite an annoyed tone of voice, “I suppose men at the heads of offices have become engaged to their employees before now Miss Trant?”

[30]

“Y-yes—of course—Become engaged.”—He was talking now as if this were that!—“But not if——”

“Not if what?”

“Well, not if they have never seen them to speak to!” I explained falteringly. “You see, Mr. Waters, the three other typists in my room——”

“Oh! Those girls!” said Mr. Waters casually, and I caught my breath.

For in the tone of those two words from the Head of Affairs I heard the rest of his meaning—“If they think it odd—if they make difficulties, they can go, at once.”

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