Miss Grig came back to the office on a Thursday, and somewhat mysteriously. Millicent, no doubt from information received through Gertie Jackson, had been hinting for several days that the return would not be long delayed; but Mr. Grig had said not one word about the matter until the Wednesday evening, when he told Lilian, with apparent casualness, as she was leaving for the night, that his sister might be expected the next morning. As for Miss Jackson, she would resume her duties only on the Monday, having family affairs to transact at Islington. Miss Jackson, it seemed, had developed into the trusted companion and intimate--almost ally, if the term were not presumptuous--of the soul and dynamo of the business. Miss Grig and she had suffered together, they had solaced and strengthened each other; and Gertie, for all her natural humility, was henceforth to play in the office a rôle superior to that of a senior employee. She had already been endowed with special privileges, and among these was the privilege of putting the interests of Islington before the interests of Clifford Street. The advent of Miss Grig, of course, considerably agitated the office and in particular the small room, two of whose occupants had never seen the principal of whose capacity for sustained effort they had heard such wonderful and frightening tales. At nine-thirty that Thursday morning it was reported in both rooms that Miss Grig had re-entered her fortress. Nobody had seen her, but ears had heard her, and, moreover, it was mystically known by certain signs, as, for example, the reversal of a doormat which had been out of position for a week, that a higher presence was immanent in the place and that the presence could be none other than Miss Grig. Everybody became an exemplar of assiduity, amiability, and entire conscientiousness. Everybody prepared a smile; and there was a universal wish for the day to be over. Shortly after ten o’clock Miss Grig visited the small room, shook hands with Lilian and Millicent, and permitted the two new typists to be presented to her. Millicent spoke first and was so effusive in the expression of the delight induced in her by the spectacle of Miss Grig and of her sympathy for the past and hope for the future of Miss Grig’s health, that Lilian, who nevertheless did her best to be winning, could not possibly compete with her. Miss Grig had a purified and chastened air, as of one detached by suffering from the grossness and folly of the world, and existing henceforth in the world solely from a cold, passionate sense of duty. Her hair was greyer, her mild equable voice more soft, and her burning eyes had a brighter and more unearthly lustre. She said that she was perfectly restored, let fall that Mr. Grig had gone away at her request for a short, much-needed holiday, and then passed smoothly on to the large room.