1
CLIVE stayed a few minutes after the others to give them some news. Phyllis, it seemed, was desperately discontented with the process of learning to be a teacher. And he had been talking with Howard Morgan about her—Howard Morgan had spent a summer in Woods Point, and remembered her as “the pretty girl who used to drive a taxi”—and he had become interested in her problem to the extent of offering her a position as his secretary (“if she can type manuscripts, and look up things in books”—he was at work now on a grandiose historical poem). That, Clive had remarked, seemed to solve the problem of coming to Chicago for her—if she accepted it. He wanted to know what they thought about it.
Rose-Ann had said, a little wearily, that that did seem to solve the problem for her.
“So you’re in favour of it?” Clive had asked, insistently.
Rose-Ann had shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not for me to decide!” she said, and so Clive, thanking her in an ironical voice, had gone away.