Kitty had lately been returned from the Propaganda Branch to her own, the Exemption Branch. Being late, she slipped into her place unostentatiously. Her in-tray contained a mass of files, as yet undealt with. She began to look through these, with a view to relegating the less attractive to the bottom of the tray, where they could wait until she had nothing better to do than to attend to them. To-day there were a great many letters from the public beginning "Dear Sir, Mr. Wilkinson said in parliament on Tuesday that families should not be reduced to destitution through the baby-taxes...." That was so like Mr. Wilkinson (parliamentary secretary to the Brains Ministry). Whenever he thoughtlessly dropped these _obiter dicta_, so sweeping, so far removed from truth, which was almost whenever he spoke, there was trouble. The guileless public hung on his words, waiting to pick them up and send them in letters to the Ministry. These letters went to the bottom of the tray. They usually only needed a stock reply, telling the applicants to attend their local tribunal. After several of these in succession, Kitty opened a file which had been minuted down from another branch, M.B. 4. Attached to it were two sheets of minutes which had passed between various individuals regarding the case in question; the last minute was addressed to M.B. 3, and said "Passed to you for information and necessary action." It was a melancholy tale from an aggrieved citizen concerning his infant, who was liable to a heavy tax, and who had been drowned by his aunt while being washed, before he was two hours old, and the authorities still demanded the payment of the tax. Kitty, who found the helplessness of M.B. 4 annoying, wrote a curt minute, "Neither information nor action seems to us necessary," then had to erase it because it looked rude, and wrote instead, more mildly, "Seen, thank you. This man appears to be covered by M.B.I. 187, in which case his taxation is surely quite in order and no action is possible. We see no reason why we should deal with the case rather than you." It is difficult always to be quite polite in minutes, cheap satire costing so little and relieving the feelings, but it can and should be done; nothing so shows true breeding in a Civil Servant.