Edward Webb went to the hills, and she began her training as a secretarial clerk. For the sum of five pounds Blister's Commercial Academy undertook to fit her for the work, and find a situation for her afterwards. She did not like the large condescension of Mr. Blister--preferably called "The Professor," and, by jocular spirits, the "Mayor and Corporation"--but she knew she could learn anything he could teach her, and she tried not to allow her feminine conception of him to prejudice her against his instruction, tried to be so impersonal as not to shrink when he stooped over her shorthand, looking, and sometimes, alas! even feeling, like a large and clever whale. Her fellow-students, youths as well as women, were to her a new race, drawn as if by some common inheritance to these inky labours. The youths were for the most part genuinely young, but the women were of all ages. There were girls of fourteen, pert or simpering, with premature glances for the dusty, doubtfully collared young men; there were young women with the independence of their generation, and scorn or frank comradeship for men; their glances were straight and piercing, painful to the undeveloped male, wishing to be paramount. There were older women, jerked into the necessity of earning bread, with the sheltered look still on them, and an air of injured or shy surprise at Fortune's hardy ways, and elderly women, making a last effort to cheat Fate. While she worked there, these people were of an absorbing interest to Theresa, but like all, save the most foolish of them, she soon passed out of the Academy, and, as she went, they fell back into the less active places of her mind; and it was strange, yet, in some way, pleasing to think that she, too, made one of a crowd of half-remembered fellow-creatures, with her own tiny but irrebuttable influence on some one's conception of life. For farewell, the Professor embedded her hand in his. "I'm glad you've got such a nice appointment," he said. "Such a gentleman. You'll find yourself very comfortable there. Come and tell me 'ow you get on. My young ladies often come and see me." He was a kind, if somewhat familiar whale, and she decided not to throw away her glove. Her gentlemanly employer was a solicitor called Edgar Partiloe. He was, she judged, about thirty years of age, and beginning to attract clients to his dingy office. No one could doubt his learning, and ability glimmered behind his powerful spectacles. His forehead was knobbly, and it shone, but his hands were beautiful, and she suspected elegance in his feet, though they were shod in crumpled leather.