"Nearly one o'clock, Miss Vivian."
"Oh, good heavens! Just bring me the Belgian files, will you? and then you'd better go to lunch."
"I can quite well go later," said Miss Delmege eagerly. "I—I thought perhaps you'd be lunching out today."
"No," drawled Char decisively; "in spite of the inducement of the new car, I shan't leave the office till I have to go to the Convalescent Homes. I'll send for some lunch when I want it."
Miss Delmege went to her own lunch with a vexed soul.
"I do wish one could get Miss Vivian to eat something," she murmured distractedly to her neighbour. "I know exactly what it'll be, you know. She'll sit there writing, writing, writing, and forget all about food, and then it'll be two o'clock, and she has to see the M.O. of Health and somebody else coming at three—and she'll have had no lunch at all."
"Doesn't she ever go out to lunch?"
"Only on slack days, and you know how often we get them, especially now that the work is simply increasing by leaps and bounds every day."
"Couldn't you take her some sandwiches?" asked Mrs. Bullivant from the head of the table. "I could cut some in a minute."
"Oh, no, thank you. She wouldn't like it. She hates a fuss," Miss Delmege declared decidedly.
The refusal, with its attendant tag of explanatory ingratitude, was received in matter-of-fact silence by every one.
Miss Vivian's hatred of a fuss, as interpreted by her secretary, merely redounded to her credit in the eyes of the Hostel.
They ate indifferent pressed beef and tepid milk-pudding, and those who could afford it—for the most part accompanied by those who could not afford it—supplemented the meal with coffee and cakes devoured in haste at the High Street confectioner's, and then hurried back to the office.
It was nearly three o'clock before Miss Delmege ventured to address her chief.
"I'm afraid you haven't had lunch. Do let me send for something."
Miss Vivian looked up, flushed and tired.
"Dear me, yes. It's much later than I thought. Send out one of the Scouts for a couple of buns and a piece of chocolate."
"Oh!" protested Miss Delmege, as she invariably did on receipt of this menu.
Char Vivian did not raise her eyes from the letter she was rapidly inditing, and her secretary retreated to give the order.
Miss Plumtree, counting on her fingers and looking acutely distressed, sat at a small table in the hall from whence the Scout was dispatched.
"Is that all she's having for lunch?" she paused in her pursuit of ever-elusive averages to inquire in awestruck tones.
"Yes, and she's been simply worked to death this morning. And it's nearly three now, and she won't get back to dinner till long after ten o'clock, probably; but she never will have more for lunch, when she's very busy, than just buns and a penny piece of chocolate. That," said Miss Delmege, with a sort of desperate admiration—"that is just Miss Vivian all over!"
IV
Char looked wearily at the clock.
The buns and chocolate hastily disposed of in the intervals of work during the afternoon had only served to spoil the successive cups of strong tea, which formed her only indulgence, brought to her at five o'clock. They were guiltless of sustaining qualities. It was not yet seven, and she never ordered the car until nine o'clock or later.
Her eyes dropped to the diminished, but still formidable, pile of papers on the table. She was excessively tired, and she knew that the papers before her could be dealt with in the morning.
But it was characteristic of Char Vivian that she did not make up her mind then and there to order the car round and arrive at Plessing in time for eight o'clock dinner and early bed, much as she needed both. To do so would have jarred with her own and her staff's conception of her self-sacrificing, untiring energy, her devotion to an immense and indispensable task, just as surely as would a trivial, easy interruption to the day's work in the shape of John Trevellyan and his new car, or an hour consecrated to fresh air and luncheon. Necessity compelled Char to work twelve hours a day some two evenings a week, in order that the amount undertaken by the Midland Supply Depôt might be duly accomplished; but on the remaining days, when work was comparatively light and over early in the evening, she did not choose to spoil the picture which she carried always in her mind's eye of the indefatigable and overtaxed Director of the Midland Supply Depôt.
So Miss Vivian applied herself wearily, once again, to her inspection of those Army Forms which were to be sent up to the London office on the morrow.
Presently the door opened and Miss Delmege came in with her hat and coat on, prepared to go.
"I thought I'd just tell you," she said hesitatingly, "that Miss Jones has come—the new clerk. Shall I take her over to the Hostel?"
Char sighed wearily.
"Oh, I suppose I'd better see her. If it isn't tonight, it will have to be tomorrow. I'd rather get it over. Send her up."
"Oh, Miss Vivian!"
"Never mind. I shan't be long."
Miss Vivian smiled resignedly.
As a matter of fact, she was rather relieved at the prospect of an interview to break the monotony of the evening. The Army Forms in question had failed to repay inspection, in the sense of presenting any glaring errors for which the Medical Officer in charge of the Hospital could have been brought sharply to book.
She unconsciously strewed the papers on the desk into a rather more elaborate confusion in front of her, and began to open the inkpot, although she had no further writing to do. The pen was poised between her fingers when Miss Delmege noiselessly opened the door, and shut it again on the entry of Miss Jones.
Char put down her pen, raised her heavy-lidded eyes, and said in her deep, effective voice:
"Good-evening, Miss—er—Jones."
She almost always hesitated and drawled for an instant before pronouncing the name of any member of her staff. The trick was purely instinctive, and indicated both her own overcharged memory and the insignificance of the unit, among many, whom she was addressing.
"How do you do?" said Miss Jones.
Her voice possessed the indefinable and quite unmistakable intonation of good-breeding, and Char instantly observed that she did not wind up her brief greeting with Miss Vivian's name.
She looked at her with an instant's surprise. Miss Jones was short and squarely built, looked about twenty-seven, and was not pretty. But she had a fine pair of grey eyes in her little colourless face, and her slim, ungloved hands, which Char immediately noticed, were unusually beautiful.
"You are from Wales, I believe?" said Char, unexpectedly even to herself. She made a point of avoiding personalities with the staff. But there appeared to be something which required explanation in Miss Jones.
"Yes. My father is the Dean of Penally. I have had some secretarial experience with him during the last five years."
Evidently Miss Jones wished to keep to the matter in hand. Char was rather amused, reflecting on the fluttered gratification which Miss Delmege or Miss Henderson would have displayed at any directing of the conversation into more personal channels.
"I see," she said, smiling a little. "Now, I wonder what you call secretarial experience?"
"My father naturally has a great deal of correspondence," returned Miss Jones, without any answering smile on her small, serious face. "I have been his only secretary for four years. Since