“Oh, all right, haughty! Don’t bother to apologize,” said Miss Holt. And we left Miss Smith to her preparations.

Presently we caught sight of her again in the crowd outside. She didn’t see us, or anything else, I think. She was smiling and sparkling and flushed, and “looked as different as a fortnight’s holiday,” as Miss Robinson said. All three of us glanced from her to the young man she was with. To bring that transfiguring light into a girl’s face, wouldn’t you have expected him to be a mixture of some Greek God and Bombardier Billy Wells?—Far from it. “Smithie’s boy” was scarcely taller than she;[9] narrow-chested office-shouldered, with a face as pale and peaked as a long envelope.

[9]

“What a kid!” criticized Miss Holt as we passed.

“All men are awful kids,” pronounced Miss Robinson, “but you do bar them looking it. Of the two, I don’t know that I wouldn’t rather have ’em like graven images!”

Which brought us back to the horrible subject of that graven image, our Governor.

Over glasses of hot milk and the poached-eggs-on-toast, the plates of which rasped on the marble-topped table of the shop that always smells of steak-and-kidney pie, the other girls made themselves specially agreeable to the colleague who was preparing for the sack in another hour.

“It is too bad. We shall miss you from our room,” said good-natured little Miss Holt. “Still—(Here, miss! I said egg, I didn’t say sardine-sandwich! I wish you’d attend when anyone speaks!... She would, if I’d a boy with me! Such is life!)—Still, it isn’t as if there wasn’t other posts you could get. Easily. Don’t you look so hopeless, Miss Trant. You’ve a taking way with you, and a nice smile; wasn’t I passing the remark, only the other day, about what a pretty smile Miss Trant’d got? And, say what you like, looks do count when a young lady’s in business!”

[10]

[10]

“Yes, it’s a pity Miss Trant don’t know she’s good-looking. We ought to have told her about that, before,” said Miss Robinson dryly. “But you’re all right. You’ll get taken on somewhere where they don’t make an international affair of it over one misplaced comma or a tiny smudge off a new ribbon. You’ll get round the men. I don’t mean Still Waters. 

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