nnouncing the top
flat to let flaunted themselves from the area railings.

After that Joan gave up the hope. Sometimes she wondered if after all
Miss Bacon had found the necessary courage to be done with it all, and
if her silence betokened death. It was more likely though that the poor
old lady had merely sunk one rung lower on the ladder of self-esteem and
was dragging out a miserable existence somewhere in the outside purlieus
of London.

CHAPTER XIII

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"

R. BROWNING.

Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really
seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little
better trained, Joan joined the County Council Night Schools in the
neighbourhood. She would go there five evenings in the week; three for
shorthand and two for typing. Her fellow scholars were drawn from all
ages and all ranks--clerks, office boys, and grey-headed men; girls with
their hair still in pig-tails, and elderly women with patient, strained
faces, who would sit at their desks plodding through the intricacies of
shorthand and paying very little attention to what went on all round
them.

The boy and girl section of the community indulged in a little rough and
tumble love-making. Even long office hours and the deadly monotony of
standing behind desk or counter all day could not quite do away with the
riotous spirit of youth. They giggled and chattered among themselves,
and passed surreptitious notes from one form to the other when Mr.
Phillips was not looking.

Mr. Phillips, the shorthand master, was a red-faced, extremely irascible
little man. He came to these classes from some other school in the city
where he had been teaching all day, and naturally, by the time evening
arrived, his none too placid temper had been stretched to
breaking-point. He was extremely impatient with any non-comprehension
of his complicated method of instruction; and he would pass from row to
row, after his dictation had been finished, snatching away the papers
from his paralysed pupils and tearing them into fragments had the
exercise been badly done.

Joan noticed the man who sat next her on the first and every night. He
was quite the worst person she had ever seen at learning anything. He
was not by any means young, grey already showed in the hair above his
ears, and his forehead wrink