He was a master hand at an interview. To begin with, he always let the interviewer state his case completely. He never interrupted; he would sit there smiling a little with his steady, observant eyes fixed on the man before him, saying in a suave, mild voice, "Yes, yes; I quite see. Exactly. Your point is—" and Stella, listening, would feel her heart sink at the dangerous volubility of his opponent. She would have liked to spring from behind the screen where she was sorting the correspondence and say, "For Heaven's sake! keep that back! You're letting yourself in!" As soon as the usually verbose and chaotic applicant had drawn his final breath, Mr. Leslie Travers gave him back his case with the points eliminated, and the defenseless places laid out before him as invertebrate and unmanageable as a jellyfish. It was hardly necessary for Mr. Leslie Travers to say, with his dry little smile, "I think you see, my dear fellow, don't you, that it would really be advisable in your own interests not to go on any further with the matter? It will be no trouble to us at all if you decide to push it, but if you take my advice, you will simply go home and think no more about it." People usually went home, and if their case had been important to them, they probably thought about it to the end of their lives; but that didn't affect Mr. Travers. It was his business to safeguard the interests of the town hall, and the more cases you could drop, the better. Of course he never dropped a case that could be used against him; he held on to these until they couldn't. He had to perfection the legal mind. He never touched what wasn't a safe proposition. A peculiar idea seized Stella as she listened to him dismissing a worried rate-payer who had asked for lowered rates, claiming the decreased value of his property, "We shall act immediately," Mr. Travers said benevolently. "We receive proof that your property has decreased in value, but it doesn't do, you know, to come here and tell me the neighborhood isn't what it was. No neighborhood ever is. Good morning."
What, she asked herself, would Mr. Leslie Travers be without his impeccable tie, his black coat, and definitely creased gray trousers, the polish on his boots, the office background, and, above all, the law? Was he really very awe-inspiring. Wasn't he just a funny little man? It was curious how she felt this morning, as if she would have liked to see some one large and lawless face Mr. Travers and show him that his successes were tricks, his interviews mousetraps, his words delusive little pieces of very stale cheese. He was too careful of his dignity, too certain of his top-hat. You couldn't imagine him dirty and oily at the north pole, putting grit into half-frozen, starving men. You couldn't, that is to say, imagine him at a disadvantage, making the disadvantage play his game.
His games were always founded on advantages. He wasn't, in fact, at all like Julian Verny, nor was there any reason why he should be. But yesterday Stella had seen Julian Verny, and to-day she saw, and saw as if for the first time, Mr. Leslie Travers.
"Now, Miss Waring," Mr. Travers said, looking up from his desk, "the correspondence, please, if you are ready." He always spoke to her, unless he was in a hurry, as if he were speaking to a good, rather bright little girl who knew her place, but mustn't be tempted unduly to forget it. When he was in a hurry he sometimes said, "Look sharp."
Stella brought the correspondence, and they went through it together with their usual celerity and carefulness, and all the time she was thinking: "We've worked together every day for two years except Sundays, and he's afraid to look at me unless we're discussing a definite question, and he won't risk a joke, and he'd be shocked if I sneezed. He's just a very intelligent, cultivated, knowing clerk, and he'd be awfully upset if I told him he had a smut on his collar."
Mr. Leslie Travers put to one side the two or three letters he had reserved for himself to answer. Stella gathered hers together into an elastic band; but as she turned to leave him he said:
"Miss Waring, one moment. You came to me on the understanding that your work here was to be purely temporary. Circumstances have prolonged your stay with us until it seems to me that we may fairly consider you, unless you have other plans, a permanent member of our staff!"
"I hope so," said Stella, with a sudden flicker in her eyes, "unless you think women shouldn't be permanent."
Mr. Leslie Travers permitted himself a very slight smile.
"That disability in your case," he said, "we are prepared to overlook in view of your value as a worker. As my permanent secretary I should wish to raise your salary ten pounds yearly. I have put this before our committee, and they have seen their way to consent to it."