"Any office," returned the girl, staring round at her. "Post office generally, or a place in the city, or something like that. Some of them are shorthand clerks, like me,--it's shorter hours and better paid as a rule; but it's getting overcrowded, like everything else." "Do you like it?" asked Katharine. The girl stared again. The possibility of liking one's work had never occurred to her before. "Of course not; but we have to grin and bear it, like the food here and everything else. I'm sorry for you if you mean to stop here long; you don't look as though you could stand it. I've seen your sort before, and they never stop long." "Oh, I mean to stop," said Katharine decidedly. But her heroic mood had been completely dissipated by the leaden atmosphere of the place, and she could not repress a sigh. "Butter bad?" asked her neighbour cheerfully. "Try the treacle; it's safer. You can't go far wrong with treacle. The jam's always suspicious; you find plum stones in the strawberries, and so on." Katharine was obliged to laugh, and the shorthand clerk, who had not meant to make a joke, seemed hurt. "I beg your pardon," said Katharine, "but your cynical view of the food is so awfully funny." "Wait till you've been here three years, like I have," said the shorthand clerk, and she returned to her newspaper. Katharine tried to stay the sinking at her heart, and made a critical review of the room. What impressed her most was the twang of the girls' voices. Not that they were noisy,--for they seemed a quiet set on the whole; either daily routine or respectability had succeeded in subduing their spirits; but for all that they did not look unhappy, and Katharine supposed, as her neighbour had remarked, that it was possible to get used to it after a time. "And the room is certainly clean," she reflected, as she made an effort to see the brighter side of things; "and the girls don't stare, or ask questions, or do anything unpleasant. I _couldn't_ tell them anything about myself if they did. And I do wish, though I know it's awfully snobbish, that some of them were ladies." Her neighbour broke in upon her thoughts, and Katharine came to herself with a start. "Whose cuby are you going to have?" she was asking. "I--I don't know. The servant said it was not empty yet. I should rather like to unpack." "I don't suppose you will get a permanent one yet awhile," said the shorthand clerk, in the cheerful way with which she imparted all her unpleasant revelations; "they always move you about for a week or two first. I expect you are coming into our room for the present; Miss King is going up to Scotland by the night mail. Jenny will tell you when she comes in. Supper is at nine," she added, pushing back her chair and folding up her paper, "and there are two reception rooms upstairs, if you want to sit somewhere till your cubicle is empty."