For two days, till Walter Babson returned, she never failed to look up when the outer door of the office opened. She found herself immensely interested in trying to discover, from her low plane as copyist, just what sort of a position Walter Babson occupied up among the select souls. Nor was it very difficult. The editor's stenographer may not appreciate all the subtleties of his wit, and the refinements of his manner may leave her cold, but she does hear things, she hears the Big Chief's complaints. Una discovered that the owner and the managing editor did not regard Walter Babson as a permanent prop of the institution; that they would keep him, at his present salary of twenty-five dollars a week, only till some one happened in who would do the same work for less money. His prose was clever but irregular; he wasn't always to be depended upon for grammar; in everything he was unstable; yet the owner's secretary reported the owner as saying that some day, if Babson married the right woman, he would "settle down and make good." Una did not dare to make private reservations regarding what "the right woman" ought to mean in this case, but she burned at the thought of Walter Babson's marrying, and for an instant she saw quite clearly the film of soft dark hair that grew just below his sharp cheek-bone. But she forgot the sweetness of the vision in scorn of herself for even thinking of marriage with a weakling; scorn of herself for aspiring to marry a man who regarded her as only a dull stenographer; and a maternal anxiety over him that was untouched by passion. Babson returned to the office, immaculate, a thin, fiery soul. But he was closeted with the secretary of the company for an hour, and when he came out his step was slow. He called for Una and dictated articles in a quiet voice, with no jesting. His hand was unsteady, he smoked cigarettes constantly, and his eye was an unwholesome yellow. She said to him suddenly, a few days later, "Mr. Babson, I'd be glad if I could take care of any papers or anything for you." "Thanks. You might stick these chassis sketches away some place right now." So she was given the chance to keep his desk straight. He turned to her for everything. He said to her, abruptly, one dreary late afternoon of April when she felt immensely languid and unambitious: "You're going to succeed--unless you marry some dub. But there's one rule for success--mind you, I don't follow it myself, I _can't_, but it's a grand old hunch: 'If you want to get on, always be ready to occupy the job just ahead of you.' Only--what the devil _is_ the job just ahead of a stenog.? I've been thinking of you and wondering. What is it?" "Honestly, Mr. Babson, I don't know. Here, anyway. Unless it's lieutenant of the girls."