four-thirty, which is his time for leaving.

But now I’m secure in the knowledge that[38] however much that machine of a young man with the closed cash-box of a mouth may long to sack me as a typist, my other, more lucrative, post could not be so easily filled.

[38]

Hurray!

To-day is Friday: that Day of Terror in the office, the day of the outward mails. But it’s brought no terror to me. My week’s salary, if you please, has amounted to eleven pounds, five shillings.

Twenty-five shillings of that was paid out to me in the usual way by Mr. Wallis, our cashier—little dreaming that my purse was already bulging with ten more than welcome sovereigns that I got in exchange for my own cheque (The grandeur of that!) at the Bank where that providential five hundred pounds (four hundred since) has been put down to the account of “Miss M. Trant.”

I daren’t allow myself to think what would have happened if it hadn’t been for that.

As it is, I am able to take home quite a lot of invalid dainties to Cicely (left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Skinner) as well as a lovely lemon-coloured azalea in a pot, and a brand-new novel (four-and-six—half her share of the house-keeping money!).

Spending this fortune will come fatally easily to me, I know. But I’ve a dim presentiment[39] that the earning of it isn’t going to be as easy as that!

[39]

This morning, which now seems about a year since I began my “supplementary duties,” Harold summoned me to appear at twelve o’clock, instead of after lunch, before the Governor.

First of all I was seized with nervous flurry, wondering what on earth I’d done. Then I remembered that it wouldn’t really matter about that. What mattered was what I should have to do next?

There was another cut-and-dried plan for this in the very tone of the Governor’s “Good morning” when he glanced up to see me standing submissively beside his desk again.

“Now, Miss Trant, you have been working in here exactly a fortnight,” he reminded me.

“Exactly a fortnight.” I wonder if he is going to keep count of every one of the three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of the year which must elapse before I shall be able to 

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