"Why did you let him do it?" asked a fair girl with white eyelashes and glasses.
"I didn't," said Dorothy; "he just barged into me and knocked the teapot out of my hand, and then made an assignation for eleven o'clock to-morrow in the First Lord's room."
"An assignation! The First Lord's room!" cried Miss Cunliffe, who by virtue of a flat chest, a pair of round glasses, and an uncompromising manner made an ideal supervisor. She was known as "Old Goggles." "What do you mean, Miss West?"
"Exactly what I say, Miss Cunliffe. He asked me if I was a stenographer, and then said that I was to see him at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning in the First Lord's room. What do you think I had better do?"
"Who is he? What is he? Do tell us, Wessie, dear," cried Marjorie Rogers excitedly.
"Well, I should think he's either a madman or else he's bought the Admiralty," said Dorothy West, her head on one side as if weighing her words before uttering them. "He's the man I saw this morning with Sir Lyster Grayne and Admiral Heyworth, going to call on the Prime Minister—at least, I suppose they were; they went up the steps into Downing Street. But ought I to go at eleven o'clock, Miss Cunliffe?" she queried.
"I'll make enquiries," said Miss Cunliffe. "I'll see Mr. Blair. Perhaps he's mad."
"But what are we going to do about our tea?" wailed Marjorie. "I'd sooner lose my character than my tea."
"Miss Rogers!" said Miss Cunliffe, whose conception of supervisorship was that she should oversee the decorum as well as the work of the other occupants of the room.
"I believe she did it on purpose," said she of the white eyelashes spitefully to a girl in a velvet blouse.