At first, as I have said, we found Miss Blake an awful bore, but we generally ended by deciding we could better spare a better man. Indeed, the months when she did not come to our office seemed to want flavour. Of gratitude--popularly supposed to be essentially characteristic of the Irish--Miss Blake was utterly destitute. I never did know--I have never known since, so ungrateful a woman. Not merely did she take everything Mr. Craven did for her as a right, but she absolutely turned the tables, and brought him in her debtor. Once, only once, that I can remember, he ventured to ask when it would be convenient for her to repay some of the money he had from time to time advanced. Miss Blake was taken by surprise, but she rose equal to the occasion. "You are joking, Mr. Craven," she said. "You mean, when will I want to ask you to give me a share of the profits you have made out of the estate of my poor sister's husband. Why, that house has been as good as an annuity to you. For six long years it has stood empty, or next to empty, and never been out of law all the time." "But, you know, Miss Blake, that not a shilling of profit has accrued to me from the house being in law," he pleaded. "I have always been too glad to get the rent for you, to insist upon my costs, and, really--." "Now, do not try to impose upon me," she interrupted, "because it is of no use. Didn't you make thousands of the dead man, and now haven't you got the house? Why, if you never had a penny of costs, instead of all you have pocketed, that house and the name it has brought to you, and the fame which has spread abroad in consequence, can't be reckoned as less than hundreds a year to your firm. And yet you ask me for the return of a trumpery four or five sovereigns--I am ashamed of you! But I won't imitate your bad example. Let me have five more to-day, and you can stop ten out of the Colonel's first payment." "I am very sorry," said my employer, "but I really have not five pounds to spare." "Hear him," remarked Miss Blake, turning towards me. "Young man"--Miss Blake steadily refused to recognise the possibility of any clerk being even by accident a gentleman--"will you hand me over the newspaper?" I had not the faintest idea what she wanted with the newspaper, and neither had Mr. Craven, till she sat down again deliberately--the latter part of this conversation having taken place after she rose, preparatory to saying farewell--opened the sheet out to its full width, and commenced to read the debates. "My dear Miss Blake," began Mr. Craven, after a minute's pause, "you know my time, when it is mine, is always at your disposal, but at the present moment several clients are waiting to see me, and--"