"Go to Jeffries, since he's made it his affair," Pepper grumbled.
"Well, Miss Day is getting married," Whitlock went on, "so that we shall want somebody in the outer office. Then promote Miss Lingard——"
"What was she like?"
Billy Izzard's eyes were dreamily on the smoke of Pepper's expensive cigar, but I saw a change come into them. Whitlock has a passable gift of description. He began to describe the woman who had looked in on the chance of a job: before he had finished I had no doubt, and Billy (I gathered) not much, of who the female out-o'-work had been. "Hallo, my model!" I guessed to be in his mind; but it was no business of his, and he appeared to be relishing his cigar as before.
"I've forgotten her name, but I have it in the book," Whitlock concluded. "Clouston or Christian or something like that."
"Well, see she isn't anti-suffrage either," quoth Pepper; "as far as I can see, that would be just as bad."
And he selected a fresh cigar.
My first thought had shaped itself in the very words for which Louie herself had pulled me up so sharply: "Poor woman!" For it was pathetically clear what had happened—what must have happened. Once more she had taken a resolution too heroic to be held to, and whether she had caved in because of myself or because of the necessity for feeding and clothing her boy made no practical difference. I could only hope it was the last. Poverty leaves little room for heroics. Later, as I think I told you, Louie got Miss Day's post, and after that Miss Lingard's, which she has still.
And my second thought was that, as she had applied of herself for Miss Levey's place, there would now be no more love lost between her and Miss Levey than there was between Miss Levey and myself. I began to muse on this....