Then, laughing pleasantly as she deposited her umbrella in the rack, she added, “No, Papa dear, not _just_ now. I thought you would be going home soon and I’d like to walk up with you.” Mr. Mitchell paused a moment, in the act of clapping on another stamp, to survey his tall daughter through his eye-glasses. “Eh! That’s good. I can’t go for half an hour though—six or seven more letters to write.” He said this a little wearily, and proceeded to date another sheet of paper, running his left hand through his thin hair, as though he had already forgotten his daughter’s presence in the absorbing nature of his relations with “Messrs. Hutton, Wells & Co.” Bert sat down in an office chair and looked about her. Not that she had never been in her father’s office before, but never before had she looked at it with the same mental vision that now surveyed the dingy windows, dusty writing-desk, and generally unkempt and dismal aspect of the place where her father spent so much of his life. [Illustration: BERT AND HER FATHER HAVE A BUSINESS INTERVIEW.] “Dear me,” she thought, “how soon I could brighten up things! I wonder if he would like it if I should try?” Presently Mr. Mitchell collected a heap of letters, shut up his inkstand, and wheeled his chair slowly about, as he carefully counted them over. Bert, who had been contemplating in her mind’s eye the effect of a rug on the floor, looked up and remarked, “What a lot of letters!” “Yes,” answered her father with a sigh, “since Nelson went I have had my hands full. It is hard to fill his place.” “Why?” asked Bert, with interest. “Because,” said Mr. Mitchell slowly, “good stenographers do not grow on every bush; and it is difficult to find any one to whom I can intrust my private correspondence.” He took his coat from the hook and slowly put it on his shoulders, while Bert sat still, looking very lugubrious. “Oh,” she said slowly, “would your amanuensis have to know short-hand?” “Of course,” her father replied, looking somewhat surprised at the unusual interest in such affairs exhibited by his brilliant daughter, of whom he had perhaps been rather more proud than fond. “You see,” he continued, “I might as well write them myself as wait for him to write out my dictation in long hand.” Mr. Mitchell stepped into the general office to give a direction to one of the many clerks, all of whom were getting their hats with great promptness as the minute-hand neared six. Bert sat looking thoughtfully at a fantastic cobweb in the corner. When her father returned and asked her if she were ready to start, she still did not offer to stir; but, planting her umbrella firmly on the floor, she said in a very serious voice, but with a gleam in her eyes: “Sir, I called strictly on business. Hearing that your confidential clerk had gone South because of weak lungs, I came to apply—pray take a seat, sir; you seem about to faint—to apply for the place.” Mr. Mitchell sat down.