Louie looked up inquiringly from her desk.
"Oh, if you want to make it a matter of conscience! But Mr. Jeffries is giving a party to-night, and both Sir Julius and I will be leaving early."
He nodded pleasantly as he dropped his hint, and left her. Louie resumed her work.
It was a report of phosphate deposits, but it had been worked over before and needed little attention; or at all events it got little. At five o'clock Louie gathered the sheets together and put them into the drawer of her table. As she did so some object at the back of the drawer knocked. She thrust in her hand. It was the forgotten bottle of chloroform.
"I'd better throw that down the basin," Louie muttered.
"I think, Mrs. Jeffries, that you and Roy between you put me a little beside myself for a day or two. Much better not to have things like that lying about; to have 'em's sometimes to use 'em. I'll throw it away now."
But as she was rising, one of the telephone girls brought her a cup of tea and a biscuit, and she closed the drawer again. The girl began to talk. She was Ivy Warner, the operator who would talk to her "boys" over the telephone if she wanted. Louie, as a matter of fact, always admired the skill with which she did this. A yard away not a word would be audible, and yet Miss Warner would be carrying on a flirtation in Brighton or Bournemouth under the eye of Mr. Stonor himself.
"Well, how's Harold?" said Louie, smiling over her cup of tea.
"Oh, not at all pleased with himself; backed three winners to-day, one at thirty to one, a gift; like to see him? He's coming up this evening," Miss Warner replied. "I'd a chin with him a quarter of an hour ago; dinner at seven-thirty, at the Troc; no steak-and-fried and a small dark lager when a thirty-to-one creeps home! He's bringing a friend, too; a dasher, Harold says; he's almost afraid to introduce him; and Daisy says she really must give her steady a show to-night. Know anybody?"
Louie thought for a moment. It was a thing she had never done before. She gave Ivy a sidelong look. Again she had the hunger to go somewhere, to see lights, hear music, smell the cigarettes of men.