“And now she wants a Step Two.”

“In the Specialized Category.” Millicent Bass went on, “Of course, Dinah’s a good person—”

“Oh, humanly speaking, Dinah’s a good person.”

“—but very competitive.” Millicent opened the top drawer of her desk, handed one paper napkin to her friend, and wiped her own fingers on another. “There are tensions there. Plenty of staff members at the Subsidiary level are holding down Specialized jobs—there’s no discrimination in her case. She’s being highly subjective.” Miss Bass, a Step Four in the Specialized Category, appealed in the voice of reason. “After all, are we properly graded, Cornelia, you and I, in terms of performance? We could all make demands if we chose to. Just one more, then.”

Millicent Bass, a large woman, belongs to a recognizable era in her profession. Her younger colleagues do not attire themselves, as Miss Bass does, in outmoded suits and golfing shoes. They no longer boast, as Miss Bass does, of caring for their complexions exclusively with soap and water. Their stockings are seamless, they have been known to dye their hair. They are, to use their own expression, changing their image. This metamorphosis not having as yet extended to their vocabulary, a conversation with one of them gives an impression less of change than of something having gone underground.

Cornelia Fromme had been Miss Bass’s closest friend and colleague for eleven years, and should logically have been a slighter person. Instead, she too was a big woman with a penetrating voice. Nevertheless, she was the weaker of the two, and in that way the balance was preserved. Had she been of smaller stature, friction between the two ladies might have been less violent, Miss Bass being encouraged by her friend’s stalwart appearance to treat her as a sparring partner of equal weight. Miss Bass made the most of a slender intellectual advantage over Miss Fromme; on the other hand, there had been a fiancé in Cornelia Fromme’s past, and when driven to the wall she would appear with a small star-sapphire on her left hand. Their quarrels were famous and acrimonious, and always resolved in the same way: one or the other—but more often Cornelia—would come to the office even earlier than usual and leave a tastefully wrapped present on the blotter of the other. The presents were thoughtful—a chain with fastenings by which spectacles could be hung around the neck when not in use, a clear plastic rainhat disguised with clusters of white daisies, a rubber clothesline, complete with pegs, that could be fixed above a bathtub. The latest disagreement, a minor one, had resulted in the box of chocolates they were at that moment sharing.