“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!” “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. He’s not a man, of course. He’s a machine that can say ‘_Now, Miss Trant!_’”—here she broke into perfect mimicry of the Governor’s curtest tone. “And’ _What is the meaning of this evening’s cables being one-fifth of a second after time?_’ He doesn’t count. You try for something where there’s a human being at the head of affairs——” “And if it’s near she can come out to lunch with us just the same as before she left,” suggested Miss Holt. “She hasn’t even left yet,” said Miss Robinson encouragingly. “What price one of those fancy cakes, Miss Trant? Choose the least poisonous-looking, and I’ll treat you—for luck!” * * * * * At a quarter to two we got back to the office. I went and washed in the dressing-room. I took down all my hair. My hair’s my pet vanity; it’s very long and thick and silky, and “just the colour of massed black pansies against her honeysuckle-coloured flesh-tints,” as Sydney Vandeleur once said. He “puts” everything like the artist that he is. (Oh, why wasn’t it to meet _him_ that I was preparing, instead of that young frozen ogre of a Governor?) I wound the long swathe smoothly round my head again, pinned it firm, and made sure it was all right at the back, _not_ with any idea of impressing Still Waters (who would scarcely have noticed the fact had all his typists been completely bald, so long as they were efficient), but merely because to feel perfectly neat made me a little less painfully nervous.