At twelve-twenty Marjorie presented herself to Mr. Meadows, in the secretary’s room, and was passed through double doors into the presence of the minister. His lordship looked up over his spectacles and indicated a chair. "Habakkuk! Good! Sit down. Four-and-a-half minutes! Well?" "I want to say," announced Marjorie, plunging head foremost into her confession, "that I can’t stay here any longer." "Why?" "I am not happy in my mind. I must go away." "Good gracious! Don’t say Meadows has fallen in love with you! I will not permit my subordinates to encroach upon my prerogatives! No—not that? Proceed, then!" "I think I ought to leave you," Marjorie continued, quite unmoved by her employer’s senile quips, "because I am having too good a time. I have been feeling all along that I ought to be doing something else." "So I have observed. Well?" "The only trouble is that if I go back to the canteen work (where they want my help very badly), I shan’t get paid for it; and I can’t afford to work without pay of some kind. I have a small allowance from home, but it doesn’t go far, and the girl I share a flat with was pretty hard up when I first picked—became acquainted with her." "Oh! Ah! So you keep a foundling hospital, too?" "Only one!" explained Marjorie. "She’s a dear," she added warmly. "She’s on the stage. She was badly in debt before the new piece started—they don’t get paid during rehearsals, you see—and she is only just beginning to get on her feet again; so I can’t afford to work for nothing during the day just now, unless—" "Unless you go on the stage yourself at night? Is that it, O _Capable de tout_?" "I was thinking of it," confessed Marjorie; "but I don’t know how you guessed." "It’s the first thing every pretty girl thinks of when confronted with the necessity of earning a living. Go on." "And I want to ask you: Is it playing the game to be on the stage _at all_ in war time? I mean, ought the men to be encouraged to go to revues, and things like that, when they are on leave? Is it all wrong, and demoralising, and unpatriotic, as some people say?" Lord Eskerley sat up, and took off his spectacles. "Unpatriotic fiddlesticks!" he remarked with great vigour. "In war time there are just three things that matter. The first is morale. I have forgotten the other two. The maintenance of purely military morale can safely be left in military hands; but civilian morale—and that includes the morale of the men on leave of course, rests mainly on the triple foundation of the Church, the Press, and the Stage; and, as things are to-day, I am not sure that the Stage doesn’t have the biggest say in the whole business. (Don’t tell Doctor Chirnside I said that, will you?) So you are thinking of joining your foundling behind the footlights. Chorus, I presume?" "Yes. They would give me three pounds a week."