She felt herself to be already on the verge of a new life that was--let us say amusing--precisely in proportion as it was different from any life she had ever known. She must be--if the word may pass--amused; she told herself so, clinching the argument by adding that it was far better to laugh than to cry. She had promised Richenda that she would call and see her Mr. Weston at his Business School in Holborn; and this might be--well, amusing. She went without loss of time. She took the Oxford Street bus one morning and alighted at the door of the School. She mounted three floors of narrow, old-fashioned stairs, asked a fair, perky boy, who somehow managed to make a good suit of clothes look cheap, where she should find Mr. Weston, and presently found herself introducing herself to a thin and melancholy-looking man with a sparse and colourless beard, a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, and a gentle and hopeless voice. This was "the Secretary Bird," then. He shook hands slackly with her, placed a chair for her in one of the bays of a sort of =E= that was lined with books of reference, and she listened to his soft, dispirited voice and to the clicking of typewriters in an adjoining room. He thanked her for "all her kindnesses" to Richenda, whatever these might have been, and presently a skimpy little woman in green plaid, with eyes that peered quizzically behind spectacles and "destined spinster" written all over her, tiptoed for a moment at the end of the bay of books, uncertain whether to approach. Then the fair, perky boy who made good clothes look cheap also came up. Mr. Weston said: "Excuse me--yes, Miss Windus?" Louie saw that she was interrupting the morning's work. She rose. "I daresay we shall see one another again," she said. "Good-bye." And, outside on the Holborn pavement again, she said to herself with decision: "Thanks--but no Business Schools for me!--Poor Richenda!" Three weeks later she became a student at that very school. * * * * * There is no puzzle about it. Some things come no less unexpectedly that they are more than reasonably to be expected. To put this as briefly as it can be put, she had merely discovered that an affair of atmosphere had become an affair of fact. That was all--nothing more, nothing less. But that was no reason why she should not be amused. The natural thing for young women in such circumstances to do is to seek their mothers. If Louie did this natural thing a little unnaturally--well, she did it unnaturally, that was all. The row, scene, or whatever it was going to be, had better be got over; then she could proceed to amuse herself. She had wired that she was coming; the Captain had met her at Trant station; but she had had nothing to say to the Captain.