to London for the week-end by
the 8.30, so he's seeing him the night. Mr. Philip would be thankful if
you'd stop."

"I will so, Mr. James," said Ellen.

"You're sure your mother'll not be feared?"

"What way would my mother be feared," said Ellen, "and me seventeen
past?"

"There's many a lassie who's found being seventeen no protection from a
wicked world." He emitted some great Burns-night chuckles, and kicked
the fire to a blaze.

She said sternly, "Take note, Mr. James, that I haven't done a hand's
turn this hour or more, and that not for want of asking for work. Dear
knows I have my hand on Mr. Morrison's door-knob half the day."

Mr. James got up to go. "You're a fierce hussy, and mean to be a partner
in the firm before you've done with us."

"If I were a man I would be that."

"Better than that for you, lassie, better than that. Wait till a good
man comes by."

She snorted at the closing door, but felt that he had come near to
defining what she wanted. It was not a good man she needed, of course,
but nice men, nice women. She had often thought that of late. Sometimes
she would sit up in bed and stare through the darkness at an imaginary
group of people whom she desired to be with--well-found people who would
disclose themselves to one another with vivacity and beautiful results;
who in large lighted rooms would display a splendid social life that had
been previously nurtured by separate tender intimacies at hearths that
were more than grates and fenders, in private picture-galleries with
wide spaces between the pictures, and libraries adorned with big-nosed
marble busts. She knew that that environment existed for she had seen
it. Once she had gone to a Primrose League picnic in the grounds of an
Edinburgh M.P.'s country home and the secretary had taken her up to the
house. They had waited in a high, long room with crossed swords on the
walls wherever there were not bookshelves or the portraits of men and
women so proud that they had not minded being painted plain, and there
were French windows opening to a flagged terrace where one could lean on
an ornate balustrade and look over a declivity made sweet with many
flowering trees to a wooded cliff laced by a waterfall that seemed, so
broad the intervening valley, to spring silently to the bouldered
river-bed below. On a white bearskin, in front of one of the few
unnecessary fires she had ever seen, slept a boar-hound. It was a pity
that the books lying