In Rusholme the landladies are a little humanized from their primitive Grundyism, partly by the girl clerk, but mainly because few of them have avoided, at one time or another, the theatrical lodger, a valiant tilter at conventionalities; and it is possible for a woman in lodgings to be called upon by a man in the evening without being evicted as a sinner. One must, of course, choose one’s landlady with discretion. Effie, who had not had the opportunity of selecting her parents and had suffered accordingly, chose her landlady with discretion. By now she had her friends, those she had made in Manchester, not those she inherited from her father; there were men amongst them, and they came to see her. Often, in fact, and especially on Sundays, her room was over-crowded; but a bed, in the semi disguise of a travelling rug, holds many callers, and they solved the problem of hospitality by bringing each a contribution to the feast. To-night she had one caller, Stewart, who, having been brought one Sunday by a man who knew a woman who was a fellow-clerk with Effie at her last-but-one place, had formed the habit of coming as often as he could. He was not at the _Warden_ office that night, for the same reason which accounted for his not knowing that she had gone to Branstone’s. He was convalescent after influenza, too limp to write the super-journalism of the _Warden_, well enough to come out to take the tonic called Effie. “I ought not to let you in to-night,” she said. “Thank Heaven for that,” he said, coming in. “Doing what one ought is the dullest thing I know--unless you’re really serious, Effie? In which case I’ll go.” His hand was on the door-knob. “I’m really serious,” she said with mock impressiveness. “I’m working overtime. Behold!” She threw herself on the bed with the manuscript in hand. “This,” she announced, “is Work.” “I can believe it,” he said, “because that looks like the typescript of a novel. If it were mine it would be a pleasure to read; but as it is not mine, it is probably work.” “Oh, it’s work all right,” she said. “Hard labour, too. I’m reading it by order of my new chief. He publishes things like this.” Stewart sat up. “Not Branstone?” he, said. “Don’t say you’ve gone to Sammy!” “Yes. Do you know him?” “Know him? I invented him. Bit of a Frankenstein for all that. Better say I know most of him. He can still spring surprises on me, and you in his office are one of’em.” “Why? Don’t you like his office?” “It’s an office. So long as you’ve to be in an office, you could pick worse--easily. Sammy’s a stream with a lot of shallows in him, but there are also depths, and I’ve never fathomed them. There’s mud in him, but it’s not the nasty sort of mud.” “I’ve seen that much,” she said. “Polluted but curable.” “You’re not by any chance thinking of yourself as a Branstone River Conservancy, are you?” “I rather like him, Dubby,” she said. “Good Lord! You and Sam: I say, old thing, no offence, but you know he’s married?”