ork, you say?"

"Utter," returned Simpkins.

Mrs. Athelstone proceeded to question him at some length about his
qualifications. When he had satisfied her that he was competent to
attend to the easy, clerical work of the office and to care for the
more valuable articles in the hall, things which she did not care to
leave to the regular cleaners, she concluded:

"I'm disposed to give you a trial, Mr. Simpkins, but I want you to
understand that under no circumstances are you to talk about me or
your work outside the office. I've been so hunted and harried by
reporters----" And her voice broke. "What I want above all else is
a clerk that I can trust."

The assurance which Simpkins gave in reply came harder than all the lies
he had told that morning, and, some way, none of them had slipped out
so smoothly as usual. He was a fairly truthful and tender-hearted man
outside his work, but in it he had accustomed himself to regard men and
women in a purely impersonal way, and their troubles and scandals simply
as material. To his mind, nothing was worth while unless it had a news
value; and nothing was sacred that had. But he was uneasily conscious
now that he was doing a deliberately brutal thing, and for the first
time he felt that regard for a subject's feelings which is so fatal to
success in certain branches of the new journalism. But he repressed
the troublesome instinct, and when Mrs. Athelstone dismissed him a few
minutes later, it was with the understanding that he should report the
next morning, ready for work.

He stopped for a moment in the ante-chamber on the way out; for the
bright light blinded him, and there were red dots before his eyes. He
felt a little subdued, not at all like the self-confident man who had
passed through the oaken door ten minutes before. But nothing could long
repress the exuberant Simpkins, and as he started down the stairway to
the street he was exclaiming to himself:

"Did you butt in, Simp., old boy, or were you pushed?"

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

III

At nine o'clock the next morning Simpkins presented himself at the
Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the
fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone. He soon grasped the details of
his simple duties, and then, like a lean, awkward mastiff, padded along
at her heels while she moved about the hall and pointed out the things
which would be under his care.

"If I were equal to it, I shou