"The fact is," said the small, cool voice of Miss Delmege, as usual contriving to filter through every other less refined sound, "she is extraordinarily tender-hearted. She can't bear to think any one is suffering when she could possibly help them; she'll simply go miles out of her way to do something for a wounded soldier or a Belgian refugee. I see that in her correspondence so much. You know--the letters she writes about quite little things, because some one or other wants her to. She'll take _endless_ trouble." "I know she's wonderful," said Mrs. Potter, looking remorseful. She was a middle-aged woman with light wispy hair, always untidy, and wearing a permanent expression of fluster. She had only been at the Hostel a few weeks. "Isn't it nearly supper-time?" yawned Tony. "I want to go to bed." "Tired, Tony?" "Yes, awfully. I was on telephone duty last night, stamping the letters, and I didn't get off till nearly eleven." "There must have been a lot of letters," said Miss Delmege, with the hint of scepticism which she always managed to infuse into her tones when speaking of other people's work. "About a hundred and thirty odd, but they didn't come down till very late. Miss Vivian was still signing the last lot at ten o'clock." "She must have been very late getting out to Plessing. It's all very well for us," remarked Miss Marsh instructively; "_we_ finish work at about six or seven o'clock, and then just come across the road, and here we are. But poor Miss Vivian has about an hour's drive before she gets home at all." "She's always at the office by ten every morning, too." "She ought to have some one to help her," sighed Miss Delmege. "Of course, I'd do anything to take some of the work off her hands, and I think she knows it. I think she knows I'd do simply anything for her; but she really wants some one who could take her place when she has to be away, and sign the letters for her, and see people. That's what she really needs." "Thank goodness, there's the supper bell," said Tony. They trooped downstairs. The house was the ordinary high, narrow building of a provincial town, and held an insufficiency of rooms for the number of people domiciled there. The girls slept three or four in a room; the Superintendent had a tiny bedroom, and a slightly larger sitting-room adjoining the large room on the ground floor where they congregated in the evenings and on Sundays, and the dining-room was in the basement. Gas flared on to the white shining American-cloth covering the long table and on the wooden kitchen chairs. The windows were set high up in the walls, and gave a view of area railings and, at certain angles, of a piece of pavement. One or two coloured lithographs hung on the walls. There was a hideous sound of scraping as chairs were drawn back or pulled forwards over the uncarpeted boards. "Sit next me, duck." "All right. Come on, Tony; get the other side of Sprouts."