Lydia felt flattered.
“I’ll do my very best,” she said earnestly.
“I’m sure you will, and once you’ve mastered the system you’ll be all right, and I’m sure I shall be thankful to get the books off my mind. I’ve no head for figures, and never had,” said Madame Elena, with perfect complacency.
She dismissed Lydia at five o’clock, although the working day was not over until six.
“But I know well enough what a first day’s work is,” she remarked shrewdly. “You’ve a splitting head, and don’t know a one from a two by this time. Trot along, and if I were you, I’d walk home. The air will do you good. You can start properly to-morrow. It’s a slack time of year, anyhow.”
Lydia departed gratefully.
Business life was not going to be the inhuman affair that books represented it to be, after all; Madame Elena had been good-natured and patient, although Lydia easily divined that she could be far otherwise on occasion, and although she had had no opportunity for intercourse with the other girls, they had looked at her in a not unfriendly way.
She walked across the Park, gazing with interest at the people she met, until she perceived that several of the men that passed her were inclined to stare frankly back at her, or to smile furtively.
Lydia remembered certain pieces of advice given long ago by Aunt Beryl, and which had always been disregarded, because they sounded so singularly superfluous to the quiet neighbourhood of Regency Terrace.
She ceased to look about her, and walked more quickly, conscious all the time of a certain exultation.