ly ignore applications
for lady helps in 'small families,' at least unless she was willing to
clean boots and blacklead grates for five shillings a week and meals
when an opportunity occurred; her last revelation as to the nature of a
post of housekeeper to an elderly gentleman who had retired from
business into the quietude of Surbiton had not been edifying. The
'Financial and Businesses' column left her colder than she had been when
she left Mrs Holt with nearly thirty-seven pounds. Then she was a
capitalist and pondered longingly over the proposals of tobacconists,
fancy goods firms, and stationers, who were prepared to guarantee a
fortune to any person who could muster thirty pounds. Fortunately Miss
Briggs had undeceived her. In her variegated experience, she herself had
surrendered some sixty golden sovereigns to the persuasive owner of a
flourishing newsagent's business. After a few weeks of vain attempts to
induce the neighbourhood to indulge in the news of the day, she had been
glad to sell her stock of sweets for eighteen shillings, and to take
half a crown for a hundred penny novelettes.

Victoria turned to the 'Situations Vacant.' Their numbers were
deceptive. She had never realised before how many people live by fitting
other people for work they cannot get. Two thirds of the advertisements
offered wonderful opportunities for sons of gentlemen in the offices of
architects and engineers on payment of a premium; she also found she
could become a lady gardener if she would only follow the courses in
some dukery and meanwhile live on air; others would teach her shorthand,
typewriting or the art of the secretary. All these she now calmly
skipped. She was obviously unfitted to be the matron of an asylum for
the feeble-minded. Such experience had not been hers, nor had she the
redoubtable record which would open the gates of an emporium. An
illegible hand would exclude her from the City.

'No,' thought Victoria, 'I'm an unskilled labourer; that's what I am.'
She wearily skimmed the agencies; as a matter of habit noted the demand
for two companions and one nursery governess and put the paper aside.
There was not much hope in any of these, for one was for Tiverton, the
other for Cardiff, which would make a personal interview a costly
business; the third, discreetly cloaked by an initial, suggested by its
terseness a companionship probably undue in its intimacy. The last six
weeks had opened Victoria's eyes to the u