He turned his head.
"I'm sorry," she said gently. "You really wanted to know, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"After I'd said that, I—I thought you were disappointed."
"You are very quick to detect an atmosphere."
"I'm sorry," she said again. "Sometimes I don't realise when the platitudes that one keeps as stock answers to enquiries are unnecessary."
"Thank you," said Julian.
"I took up work because I was tired of living at home. A good many girls are like that. However, in our case there was very little money, and it was just as well that I should do something. I thought I should like secretarial work; it all sounded interesting, and I had always cared for books and writing. I didn't know in the least what it was going to be like. I'd never even been to school. The six months at the training institute wasn't bad; it was all quite new, and I liked learning the things, and doing well in the shorthand tests. At the end of the course, the training institute undertook to find one a post—and they got me a job with a firm in London. It was supposed to be a very good one—short hours and decent pay. My mother—my father was dead—was upset at the thought of my staying on in London alone, but I wrote and said that I'd been able to manage perfectly while I was at the institute—one lived 'in' there, as a matter of fact—and that anyway I'd made up my mind to do it, and to make a success of it. After all, I was twenty-two—and she could give me a small allowance, and I thought that with that and my salary it wouldn't be very difficult."
"I should imagine that by yourself, in London, at twenty-two, it might, on the contrary, be very difficult indeed," said Julian significantly.
"Not in the way you mean," Miss Marchrose remarked candidly. "From what one reads in novels, girls who work have to be on their guard from morning till night against—undesirable attentions. It was the one thing I thought I should have to beware of.... And all I can say is, that unless one asks for trouble of that sort, it simply doesn't happen to the average woman."