Each department was supposed to possess its own typewriter and to make use of it, and the services of the shorthand-typist, who was amongst the few paid workers in the office, were exclusively reserved for Miss Vivian.

The work entailed was no sinecure, the more especially since Miss Collins was obdurate as to her time-limit of ten to five-thirty. But it was never difficult for Miss Vivian to commandeer volunteer typists from the departments when her enormous correspondence appeared to her to require it.

"Good-morning, Miss Vivian."

"Good-morning," said Char curtly, unsmiling. Miss Collins always gave her a sense of irritation. She was so jauntily competent, so consciously independent of the office.

Shorthand-typists could always find work in the big Questerham manufacturing works, and Miss Collins had only been secured for the Supply Depot with difficulty. She received two pounds ten shillings a week, never worked overtime, and had every Sat.u.r.day afternoon off. Miss Vivian had once, in the early days of Miss Collins, suggested that she might like to wear uniform, and had received a smiling and unqualified negative, coupled with a candid statement of Miss Collins's views as to the undesirability of combining clerical work with the exhausting activities required in meeting and feeding the troop-trains.

"I should be sorry to think that any of _my_ staff would shirk the little additional work which brings them into contact with the men who have risked their lives for England," had been the freezing _finale_ with which the dialogue had been brought to a close by the disgusted Miss Vivian.

Since then her stenographer had continued to frequent her presence in transparent and _decolletees_ blouses, with short skirts swinging above silk-stockinged ankles and suede shoes. Even her red, fluffy curls were unnecessarily decked with half a dozen sparkling p.r.o.ngs. But she was very quick and intelligent, and Miss Vivian had perforce to accept her impudent prettiness and complete independence.

Char never, after the first week, made the mistake of supposing that Miss Collins would ever fall under that spell of personal magnetism to which the rest of the office was in more or less complete subjection, and she consequently wasted no smile upon her morning greeting.

"This is to the Director-General of Voluntary Organizations, and please do not use abbreviations. Kindly head the letter in full."

Miss Collins's small manicured hand ran easily over her notebook, leaving a trail of cabalistic signs behind it.

Char leant back, half-closing her eyes in a way which served to emphasize the tired shadows beneath them, and proceeded with her fluent, unhampered dictation.

She was seldom at a loss for a word, and had a positive gift for the production of rhetorical periods which never failed to impress Miss Delmege, still writing at her corner table. In spite of frequent interruptions, Char proceeded unconcernedly enough, until at the eleventh entry of a messenger she broke into an impatient exclamation:

"Miss Delmege, please deal for me!"

Miss Delmege swept forward, annihilating the unhappy bearer of the card with a look of deep reproach, as she took it from her.

"I'm afraid it's some one to see you," she faltered deprecatingly.

Char frowned and took the card impatiently, and Miss Delmege stood by looking nervous, as she invariably did when her chief appeared annoyed.

Char Vivian, however, although frequently impatient, was not a pa.s.sionate woman, and however much she might give rein to her tongue, seldom lost control of her temper, for the simple reason that she never lost sight of herself or of her own effect upon her surroundings.

Her face cleared as she read the card.

"Please ask Captain Trevellyan to come up here."

The messenger disappeared thankfully and Miss Delmege retreated relievedly to her corner.

Char leant back again in her capacious chair, a sheaf of papers, at which she only cast an occasional glance, before her.

She was not at all averse to being found in this att.i.tude, which she judged to be most typical of herself and her work, and for an instant after Captain Trevellyan's booted tread had paused upon the threshold she affected unawareness of his presence and did not raise her eyes.

"... I am in receipt of your letter of even date, and would inform you in reply...."

"Oh, John! So you've come for an official inspection?"

"Since you're never to be seen any other way," he returned, laughing, and grasping her hand.

"I ought to send you away; we're in the midst of a heavy day's work."

"Don't you think you might call a--a sort of truce of G.o.d, for the moment, and tell me something about this office of yours? I'm much impressed by all I hear."

Miss Delmege, judging from her chief's smile that this suggestion was approved of, brought forward a chair, and acknowledged Captain Trevellyan's protesting thanks with a genteel bend at the waist and a small, tight smile.

The amenities of social intercourse were always strictly held in check by the limits of officialdom by Miss Vivian's staff, with the exception of the unregenerate Miss Collins, who tucked her pencil into her belt, uncrossed her knees, and rose from her chair.

"I'm afraid I'm interrupting you," said Trevellyan politely, addressing his remark to Char, but casting a quite unnecessary look at the now smiling Miss Collins.

"I've nearly finished," said Char.

"Shall I come back later?" suggested Miss Collins gaily, swinging a turquoise heart from the end of an outrageously long gold chain.

"I will ring if I want you," said Miss Vivian in tones eminently calculated to allay any a.s.sumption of indispensability on the part of her employee.

With a freezing eye she watched Miss Collins swing jauntily from the room, her red head c.o.c.ked at an angle that enabled her to throw a farewell dimple in the direction of Captain Trevellyan.

"Is that one of your helpers?" was the rather infelicitously worded inquiry which John was inspired to put as Miss Collins disappeared.

"The office stenographer," said Char curtly.

"Why don't you have poor old Miss Bruce up here? She's longing to help you--couldn't talk about anything but this place last night."

"Dear old Brucey!" said Char, with more languor than enthusiasm in her voice. "But there are one or two reasons why it wouldn't quite do to have her in the office; we have to be desperately official here, you know. Besides, it's such a comfort to get back in the evenings to some one who doesn't look upon me as the Director of the Midland Supply Depot! I sometimes feel I'm turning into an organization instead of a human being."

Miss Vivian, needless to say, had never felt anything of the sort, but there was something rather gallantly pathetic in the half-laughing turn of the phrase, and it sufficed for a weighty addition to Miss Delmege's treasured collections of "Glimpses into Miss Vivian's Real Self."

She received yet another such a few minutes later, when Captain Trevellyan began to urge Miss Vivian to come out with him in the new car waiting at the office door.

"Do! I'll take you anywhere you want to go, and I really do want you to see how beautifully she runs. Come and lunch somewhere?"

"I'd love it," declared Char wistfully, "but I really mustn't, Johnnie.

There's so much to do."

Either the cousinly diminutive, or something unusually unofficial in Miss Vivian's regretful voice, caused the discreet Miss Delmege to rise and glide quietly from the room.

"Miss Vivian really is most awfully human," she declared to a fellow-worker whom she met upon the stairs. "What do you think I've left her doing?"

The fellow-worker leant comfortably against the wall, balancing a wire basket full of official-looking doc.u.ments on her hip, and said interestedly:

"Do tell me."

"Refusing to go for a motor ride with a cousin of hers, an officer, who wants her to see his new car. And she awfully wants to go--I could see that--it's only the work that's keeping her."

"I must say she _is_ splendid!"

"Yes, isn't she?"

"I think I saw the cousin, waiting downstairs about a quarter of an hour ago. Is he a Staff Officer, very tall and large, and awfully fair?"