As I said, I have an object in relating all this--several objects. The next thing happened perhaps half-an-hour later, when Mr Toothill had almost freed one candlestick of wool, but otherwise had not greatly added to our sociability. For that half hour Pepper had reigned among us, but then, bit by bit, he had begun slowly to slip back again. We had guardedly discussed the prospects of the Consolidation; and then, as a preliminary to his coming down presently with a run, Pepper made a perfectly innocent but altogether luckless remark. It was about Miss Levey. "It was understood she wasn't to come over," he grumbled; "I agreed to that; but I don't see why she should be taken away from me just now." (I had got rid of Miss Levey that very week.) "Hang her private convictions! What do I care about her private convictions as long as she does her work?" I laughed, though a little lamely. "My dear Judy, we don't want a woman whose job interferes with her propaganda, and she's been incubating 'rights' of one sort and another for a long time. Send her to Schmerveloff: he receives that sort with open arms. Let him make a case of persecution out of it. We want efficiency." "But, dash it all, she _was_ efficient." "She wasn't. You had to pull her up last week, and I had twice the week before. She'd been warned." Judy, who really didn't care a button about the loss of Miss Levey, laughed. "The red rag again, Jeffries! You have here, Mr Toothill, quite the most insular man in this realm, _and_ the most obstinate. I can make him do anything he's a mind to--and not much else. Well, well, if you won't have a suffragette, perhaps you'll find me a member of the Women's Primrose League?" But here Whitlock struck in. "By the way, I'd an applicant this morning." "From the Women's Primrose League?" Pepper tossed over his shoulder. "I don't mean for the private work, but as general amanuensis," Whitlock went on. "I asked her how she heard we wanted anybody, and she said she hadn't--had just looked in on the chance." "Go to Jeffries, since he's made it his affair," Pepper grumbled. "Well, Miss Day _is_ getting married," Whitlock went on, "so that we shall want somebody in the outer office. Then promote Miss Lingard----" "What was she like?" Billy Izzard's eyes were dreamily on the smoke of Pepper's expensive cigar, but I saw a change come into them. Whitlock has a passable gift of description. He began to describe the woman who had looked in on the chance of a job: before he had finished I had no doubt, and Billy (I gathered) not much, of who the female out-o'-work had been. "Hallo, my model!" I guessed to be in his mind; but it was no business of his, and he appeared to be relishing his cigar as before. "I've forgotten her name, but I have it in the book," Whitlock concluded. "Clouston or Christian or something like that." "Well, see she isn't anti-suffrage either," quoth Pepper; "as far as I can see, that would be just as bad."