“Oh, you want work?” he said with a distinct sneer, looking me up and down as if I were an animal to be judged. “You want work, do you?” My nervousness began to melt away before his offensive manner, and I felt the blood mounting, but trying to keep my temper and to believe still there must be some mistake, I again reminded him of our previous interview at the races and in the ballroom. “Oh, to be sure, yes, now I remember,” he said casually, and turned to take up pencil and paper on his desk. I looked about for a chair, but there was none near, so I remained standing, feeling something like a suspected man about to be examined by a magistrate. “What can you do?” he asked abruptly. “Well,” I stammered, utterly surprised at his rudeness and manner, “I’ve not had much experience yet, of course, but I’m willing to begin at the bottom and work up. I’ll do anything for a beginning.” “That’s what everyone says. ‘Doing anything’ is no good to me. I want to know what you _can_ do. All my clerks here write shorthand----” “I can write shorthand accurately and fast,” I hastened to interrupt, evidently to his surprise, as though he had not expected to find me thus equipped. “But at present,” he hastened to add, “there are no vacancies on my staff, and I fear I can offer you nothing unless----” he hesitated a moment and then looked me full in the face. This time there could be no mistake. I saw blood in his eye and I realized he was savagely angry with me for some reason, and was determined to make the interview as unpleasant for me as possible. “----unless you care to sling baggage on a side station up the line,” he finished sneeringly. The blood rushed to my face, and I understood in a flash that the interview was a farce and his only object to humiliate me. I had so far swallowed my temper on the chance of getting a position, but I knew that a post under such a man, who evidently hated me, would be worse than nothing. So I gave him one look from head to foot and turned to leave the room. I could have struck him in the jaw with the greatest pleasure in the world. “Then I understand you have no vacancies,” I said quietly as soon as I got to the door. “I will write and thank Sir George Stephen and tell him about your kindness to me.” I said this because it was the only thing that occurred to me to say, and not with the object of making him uncomfortable. I had no intention of putting my words into effect, I had no idea my stray shot would hit the mark. Yet it did. The official, purple, and dismayed, got up hastily, and called me to stay a moment and he would see if something was not possible. Hurried sentences followed me to the passage, but I merely bowed and went out, knowing perfectly well that nothing could come of further conversation. CHAPTER X