“It must be finished to-night,” said the Bishop with decision. “It is essential that it should be handed to me for revision by nine o’clock. Kindly make a note of this, Miss Thorold! I must say I am disappointed by your rate of progress. I had hoped that work so purely mechanical would have taken far less time.”
He spoke with curt impatience, but no shade of feeling showed upon his secretary’s face. She said nothing whatever in reply.
The Bishop, lean, ascetic, forbidding of aspect, pulled at his clean-shaven chin with an irritable gesture. He had a bundle of letters in his hand which he flapped down upon the table before her.
“I had hoped for better things,” he said. “There are these to be answered, and when is time to be found for them if your whole day is to be occupied in the typing of my treatise—a very simple piece of work, mere, rough copy, after all, which will have to be done again from beginning to end after my revision?”
“I will take your notes upon those this afternoon,” said Frances. “I will have them ready for your signature in time to catch the midnight post.”
“Absurd!” said the Bishop. “They must go before then.”
She heard him without dismay. “Then I will do them first, and type the rest of the treatise afterwards,” she said.
He made a sound of impatience. “A highly unsatisfactory method of procedure! I am afraid I cannot compliment you upon the business-like way in which you execute your duties.”
He did not expect a reply to this, but as if out of space it came.
“Yet I execute them,” said Frances Thorold steadily and respectfully.