The patient sat up with a groan of relief. His dark strong positive liverish profile turned away towards the spittoon. There was a clean broad gap of neck between the strong inturned ending of his hair and the narrow strip of firm heavily glazed blue white collar fitting perfectly into the collar of the well-cut grey coat clothing the firm bulk of his body. "To my mind there's no reason why they shouldn't do thoroughly well" he said into the spittoon. "All the hospitals would employ 'em in the end. They're more natty and conscientious than men and there's nothing in the work they can't manage." "No, I think that's so." Miriam cleared her throat emphatically. They had no right to talk in that calm disposing way in the presence of a woman. Mr. Hancock felt that too. That kind of man was always nice to women. Strong and cheerful and helping them; but with his mind full of quotations and generalisations. He would bring them out anywhere. It would never occur to him that the statement of them could be offensive. His newspaper office would be full of little girls. "It's those little ph'girls." But the Amalgam Company probably had quite uneducated girls. Nobody ought to be asked to spend their lives calculating decimal quantities. The men who lived on these things had their drudgery done for them. They did it themselves first. Yes, but then it meant their future. A woman clerk never becomes a partner. There was no hope for women in business. That man's wife would be wealthy and screened and looked after all her days; he working. He would live as long as she--a little old slender nut-brown man. "What was the employment Mr. Dolland was speaking of?" "Dispensing. I think he's quite right. And it's not at all badly paid." "It ought not to be. Think of the responsibility and anxiety." "It's a jolly stiff exam too." "I like the calm way he talks, as if it were his business to decide what is suitable." Mr. Hancock laughed. "He's a very influential man, you know," he said going to the tube. "Yes?--Oh, show them up."