‘What time do the others get here?’

‘What others?’

‘The other type – wom – young ladies?’

‘Nine o’clock,’ said she bitterly. ‘And it’s five past now. I have to get here at a quarter to, and I do, too.’

Francis stared at her. He saw exactly what was needed to make her his firm ally. He advanced upon her until he was standing above her, looking down into her surprised and rather spotty little face.

‘I say,’ said Francis, in a low, serious voice, ‘What a rotten shame.’

And just then Miss Ulick came in, furling her wet umbrella and followed by Miss Bates, Miss Cannard, and Miss Forbes; and the day had begun.

But Francis’s aim was achieved. He had made a friend. He had no more sulks and hauteur from Lily Spain; instead he had admiration and the liveliest interest in all he said and did, and frequent and rather unintelligent laughter at his jokes. She tried to make an alliance with him against the four older women, who were inclined to snub her, but he was too wise to take up such an attitude. Besides, her teeth were not good.

The other typists soon got to like him, and became used to the lack of subservience in his manner. He could not bring himself to call any of them ‘Miss’. He gave them their full name or just said ‘you’; and at first this outraged Miss Ulick, Miss Bates, Miss Cannard and Miss Forbes. But his manner was so polite, if unconventional, and he made the tea so deftly and always chose such nice cakes with the five pence which they gave him to lay out on their behalf, and he was so intelligent when he answered the telephone (far more intelligent than poor Lily Spain, whose task this had been before his arrival), and he never bungled a message.

He was a wit, too, in a mad and rather shocking way. They were used to humour of the ‘You’re another’ or the ‘A word in thine ear, fair maid’ variety. Francis introduced them to irony and exaggeration; he drew absurd imaginary verbal pictures for them, in which he described Mr Graby’s home life until they were all choking with laughter, for he had some of that wild, high-piled fantastic humour which Sophia loved to exercise.

Of course he had more prejudices to conquer than the one against his un-office boyish appearance and manner. There was some resentment because he looked like a comfortably-off youth, and yet filled one of the lowest jobs in the building at a pound a week. The typists and some of the junior clerks said (on behalf of the three office boys in the other departments who would certainly never have thought of such a grievance for themselves) that he was taking the pound out of other prospective office boys’ mouths. They said that it was a damned shame that Laughing Gravy should push one of his little pets who wanted a spot of pocket money into a soft job; and Francis’s own arrogant, faintly ironical and fantastic manner did not make them see his position in a more charitable light.