Miss Robinson, Smithie and little Miss Holt were probably even now gossiping excitedly over this event; but how much rather I would have been with them! “Now, Miss Trant, what do you prefer for lunch?” (My only variation of lunch for the last year having been from “Bovril and a baked apple”[49] to “Poached-egg-on-toast, with a glass of hot milk.”) [49] “I don’t mind at all.” “Then I’ll order.” And very delicious were the things he did order. Apparently even a machine liked perfect bisque de homard, and crisp whitebait—his one touch of nature, in fact. I longed for Cicely—who does love nice food, poor child!—to be there to help me enjoy this. In fact, I wished that Cicely and I could have had the lunch to our two gossiping selves. How we should have enjoyed all the luxuries, from the pretty glass to the freedom to chat, softly but unrestrainedly, about everyone we noticed in the place. I have heard it said that “Women would rather talk to other women than to men, even when they would rather talk to a man than to a woman.” I don’t think I’ve often met any single man I’d rather talk to than to a fairly amusing member of my own sex. You have to say most things twice to men, and then they don’t really understand.... Still Waters, of course (as his typists explain to each other at least four times in a morning), isn’t what you could call a man. Somehow, in surroundings that used to be more familiar to me than offices and City streets, I lost a little of that awe-struck nervousness of my employer. For a time I could almost forget he was that.[50] He became—Well! he made me feel as I did in the old days when I had got someone very heavy-in-hand to take me in to dinner, or as if I were sitting out a dance with some rather hopeless partner. I mean that was about as far as any conversation between us went—a few stilted, distrait remarks, punctuating long stretches of silence. [50] Meanwhile, I glanced round the big place at the other luncheon-parties, people laughing and chatting together—out evidently for amusement, not “business”! Several times I caught glances directed at our own table. I wondered what the people were thinking of us—of the enormously tall, fair
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