"I'm afraid you'll be late. Can't I help you?"
"Thanks, dear, but I dare say I can just scramble through. What about your washing?"
"Oh, I did all that on Saturday night," said Grace, indicating a respectable brown-paper parcel tied up with string and with an orderly list pinned on to the outside.
"You're a marvel!" sighed Miss Marsh. "Don't wait, Gracie."
Miss Jones went downstairs and out into Pollard Street. She moved rather well, and had never been known to swing her arms as she walked. Her face was very serious. She often thought how kind it was of the others not to call her a prig, since her methodical habits and innate neatness appeared to be in such startling contrast to the standards prevailing at the Hostel. She had never been sent to school, or seen much of other girls, and the universal liking shown to her by her fellow-workers gave her almost daily a fresh sense of pleased surprise.
Arrived at the office, she signed her name at the door, and proceeded upstairs to Miss Vivian's room.
Miss Vivian came in, chilled from her motor drive and with that rather pinky tinge on her aquiline nose which generally forecasted a troubled morning. The observant Miss Jones regarded this law very matter-of-factly as an example of cause and effect. She felt sure that Miss Vivian only felt at her best when conscious of looking her best, and hoped very much that the winter would not be a very cold one. It was obvious that Miss Vivian suffered from defective circulation, which her sedentary existence had not improved.
But it was Miss Delmege who solicitously suggested fetching a foot-warmer from the Supplies Department, and who placed it tenderly at the disposal of Miss Vivian.
After that the atmosphere lightened, and it was with comparative equanimity that Miss Vivian received the announcement that a lady had called and desired to see her.
"Please send up her name and her business on a slip of paper, and you can tell the clerk in the outer hall that I won't have those slipshod messages sent up," was the reception of the emissary.
"Yes, Miss Vivian."
Miss Delmege gathered up a sheaf of papers from her table and glided from the room. Grace, whose powers of mental detachment permitted her to concentrate on whatever she was doing without regard to her surroundings, went on with her work.
The interviews conducted by Miss Vivian seldom interested her in the least.
That this one was, however, destined to become an exception, struck her forcibly when the sudden sound of a piercing feminine voice on the stairs came rapidly nearer.
"... as for my name on a slip of paper, I never heard such nonsensical red-tape in my life. Why, Char's mother and I were girls together!"
Although every one in the office was aware that Miss Vivian's baptismal name was Charmian, and that this was invariably shortened by her acquaintances to Char, it came as a shock even to the imperturbable Miss Jones to hear this more or less sacred monosyllable ringing up the stairs to Miss Vivian's very table.
"Who on earth—" began Char indignantly, when the door flew open before her caller, who exclaimed shrilly and affectionately on the threshold:
"My dear child, you can't possibly know who I am, but my name is Willoughby, and when I was Lesbia Carroll your mother and I were girls together. I had to come in and take a peep at you!"
There was a sort of rustling pounce, and Grace became aware that the outraged Miss Vivian had been audibly and overpoweringly kissed in the presence of a giggling Scout and of her own junior secretary.
V
Mrs. Willoughby, in Miss Vivian's private office, reversed all rules of official precedent.
"Sit down again, my dear child—sit down!" she cried cordially, at the same time establishing herself close to the table. "I hear you're doing wonderful work for all these dear people—Belgians and the dear Tommies and every one—and I felt I simply had to come in and hear all about it. Also, I want to propound a tiny little scheme of my own which I think will appeal to you. Or have you heard about it already from that precious boy John, with whom, I may tell you, I'm simply madly in love? I'm always threatening to elope with him!"
"I'm afraid," said Char, disregarding her visitor's pleasantry, "that I can really hardly undertake anything more. We are very much understaffed as it is, and the War Office is always—"
"I can turn the whole War Office round my little finger, my dear," declared Mrs. Willoughby. "There's the dearest lad there, a sort of under-secretary, who's absolutely devoted to me, and tells me all sorts of official tit-bits before any one else hears a word about them. I can get anything I want through him, so you needn't worry about the War Office. In fact, to tell you rather a shocking little secret, I can get what I want out of most of these big official places—just a little tiny manipulation of the wires, you know. [Cherchez la femme—though I oughtn't to say such things to a girl like you, ought I?"]
Char looked at Mrs. Willoughby's large, heavily powdered face, at her enormous top-heavy hat and over-ample figure, and said nothing.
But no silence, however subtly charged with uncomplimentary meanings, could stem Mrs. Willoughby's piercing eloquence.
"This is what I want to do, and I'm told at the camp here that it would be simply invaluable. I want to get up a Canteen for the troops here, and for all those dear things on leave."
"There are several Y.M.C.A. Huts already."
"My dear! I know it. But I want to do this all on my little own, and have quite different rules and regulations. My Lewis, who's been in the Army for over fifteen years, poor angel, tells me that they all—from the Colonel downwards—think it would be the greatest boon on earth, to have a lady at the head of things, you know."
"My time is too much taken up; it would be quite out of the question," said Char simply.
"Darling child! Do you suppose I meant you—a ridiculously young thing like you? Of course, it would have to be a married woman, with a certain regimental position, so to speak. And my Lewis is second in command, as you know, so that naturally his wife.... You see, the Colonel's wife is an absolute dear, but an invalid—more or less, and no more savoir faire than a kitten. A perfect little provincial, between ourselves. Whereas, of course, I know this sort of job inside out and upside down—literally, my dear. The hours I've toiled in town!"
"But I'm afraid in that case you oughtn't to leave—"
"I must! I'm compelled to! It's too cruel, but the doctor simply won't answer for the consequences if I go back to London in my present state. But work I must. One would go quite, quite mad if one wasn't working—thinking about it all, you know."
"Major Willoughby is—er—in England, isn't he?"
"Thank God, yes!" exclaimed Lesbia, with a fervour that would have startled her husband considerably. "My heart bleeds for these poor wives and mothers. I simply thank God upon my knees that I have no son! When one thinks of it all—England's life-blood—"
Char did not share her mother's objection to eloquence expended upon the subject of the war, but she cut crisply enough into this exaltée outpouring.
"One is extremely thankful to do what little one can," she said, half-unconsciously throwing an appraising glance at the files and papers that were littered in profusion all over the table.
"Indeed one is!" cried Lesbia, just as fervently as before. "Work is the only thing. My dear, this war is killing me—simply killing me!"
Miss Vivian was not apparently prompted to any expression of regret at the announcement.