n the round, japanned tin box where he kept his collars, and let
his collars run loose about the drawer. He shut the lid down tight on
the smell and took the box and hid it in the cupboard where his boots
were, where the smell couldn't possibly get out, and where the very next
day his mother found it and received some enlightenment as to Ranny's
state of mind. But, like a wise woman, she kept it to herself.

And the smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast
pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of
a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark.

The counting-house at Woolridge's was an immense long room under the
roof, lit by a row of windows on each side and a skylight in the middle.
The door gave on a passage that ran the whole length of the room,
dividing it in two. Right and left the space was partitioned off into
pens more or less open. On Ransome's right, as he entered, was the pen
for the women typists. On his left the petty cashier's pen, overlooking
the women. Next came the ledger clerks, then the statement clerks; and
facing these the long desk of the checking staff. At the back of the
room, right and left, were the pens of the very youngest clerks, who
made invoices. From their high desks they could see the bald spot on the
assistant secretary's head. He, the highest power in that hierarchy, had
a special pen provided for him behind the ledger and the statement
clerks; a little innermost sanctuary approached by a short passage.
Surrounded entirely by glass, he could overlook the whole of his
dominion, from the boys at the bottom to the gray-headed cashier and the
women typists at the top.

And in between, scattered and in rows, the tops of men's heads: heads
dark and fair and grizzled, all bowed over the long desks, all
diminished and obscured in their effect by the heavy mahogany of their
pens, by the shining brass trellis-work that screened them, by the
emerald green of the hanging lampshades, by the blond lights and clear
shadows of the walls, and by the everlasting streaming, drifting, and
shifting of the white paper that they handled.

The whole place was full of sounds: the hard clicking of the
typewriters, and under it the eternal rustling of the white papers, the
scratching of pens, the thud of ledgers on desks, the hiss of their
turning leaves, and the sharp smacking and slamming as they closed.

And, in the middle of that stir and