Lucy accepted the counsel. She found the address Miss Latimer gave her. It was in one of the long roads which skirt the centre of London—roads which were rural once, and where, here and there, a garden still lingers isolated among the shops which have been built over its neighbours. Lucy’s destination was one of these shops set out with servants’ caps, aprons, small haberdashery wares, stationery, and a few cheap books. On the little counter was a big desk laden with ledgers and festooned with files of letters, and behind the desk stood an elderly woman. She had an air of old-fashioned gentility about her. She wore no cap, but her glossy, waving hair, unmingled with silver, hung in two or three curls and was done up in a crisp little knot behind. Her brown merino gown was severely simple and well kept, with no frill or ornament whatever, save an out-of-date embroidered collar, fastened by an “In Memoriam” brooch. There was nothing frowsy about this woman, nothing unctuous or self-indulgent in her thin sharp face, nor servile or fawning in her rather abrupt manner. Lucy was prepossessed by her, because she was so unlike the official at the big registry office. This alert person had little encouragement to give. “Generals” were said to be few and far between. She asked Lucy searching questions about the situation she had to offer, saying that the young women would expect her to tell them all about it before they walked so far. She said that it would not recommend the place to most of them that it was very quiet; they generally thought that meant a “particular,” fidgety mistress, and “they didn’t mind a little more work if they could get the more of their own way.” Lucy said she would prefer an elderly woman, as she would be left much alone in the house. But the alert person shook her head, saying that in nine cases out of ten an elderly woman who would take such a place would drink—a statement which Lucy, after her recent experience, was not prepared to deny. The alert person promised “to do her best.” The fee for putting Mrs. Challoner’s name on her “book” would be only one shilling; she would go on sending girls till Mrs. Challoner was “suited,” when there would be another charge of four shillings.