University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I
VIVIE AND NORIE

The date when this story begins is a Saturday afternoon in June, 1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices of Fraser and Warren, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open, affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely dimmed by the city smoke and fumes.

In the room itself there are on each of the tables vases of flowers and a bunch of dark red roses on the top of the many pigeon-holed bureau at which Vivien Warren is seated. The walls are mainly covered with book-shelves well filled with consultative works on many diverse subjects. There is another series of shelves crowded with neat, green, tin boxes containing the papers of clients. A dark green-and-purple portière partly conceals the entry into a washing place which is further fitted with a gas stove for cooking and cupboards for crockery and provisions.

At the opposite end of the room is a door which opens into a small bedroom. The fireplace in the main room is fitted with the best and least smelly kind of gas stove obtainable in 1900.

There are two square tables covered with piles of documents neatly tied with green tape and ranged round the central vase of flowers; a heavy, squat earthenware vase not easily knocked over; and there is a second bureau with pigeon-holes and a roll top, similar to the one at which Vivien Warren is seated. This is for the senior partner, Honoria Fraser. Between the bureaus there is plenty of space for access to the long west window and consequently to the parapet which can be used like a balcony. Two small arm-chairs in green leather on either side of the fireplace, two office chairs at the tables and a revolving chair at each bureau complete the furniture of the partners' room of Fraser and Warren as you would have seen it twenty years ago.

The rest of their offices consisted of a landing from which a lift and a staircase descended, a waiting-room for clients, pleasantly furnished, a room in which two female clerks worked, and off this a small room tenanted by an office boy. You may also add in imagination an excellent lavatory for the clerks, two telephones (one in the partners' room), hidden safes, wall-maps; and you must visualize everything as pleasing in colour--green, white, and purple--flooded with light; clean, tidy, and admirably adapted for business in the City.

Vivien Warren, as already mentioned, was, as the curtain goes up, seated at her bureau, reading a letter. The letter was headed "Camp Hospital, Colesberg, Cape Colony, May 2, 1900"; and ran thus:--

DEAREST VIVIE,--

Here I am still, but my leg is mending fast. The enteric was the worse trouble. That is over and done

with, though I am the colour of a pig-skin saddle. My leg won't let me frisk just yet, but otherwise I feel as strong as a horse.

When I was bowled over three months ago and the enteric got hold of me, on top of the bullet through my thigh, I lost my self-control and asked the people here to cable to you to come and nurse me. It was silly perhaps--the nursing here is quite efficient--and if any one was to have come out on my account it ought to have been the poor old mater, who wanted to very much. But somehow I could only think of you. I wanted you more than I'd ever done before. I hoped somehow your heart might be touched and you might come out and nurse me, and then out of pity marry me. Won't you do so? Owing to my stiff leg I dare say I shall be invalided out of the Army and get a small wound pension. And I've a project which will make lots of money--up in Rhodesia--a tip I've had from a man in the know. I'm going to take up some land near Salisbury. Ripping country and climate and all that. It would suit you down to the ground. You could put all that Warren business behind you, forget it all, drop the name, start a new career as Mrs. Frank Gardner, and find an eternally devoted husband in the man that signs this letter.

I've been out here long enough to be up to all the ropes, and I'd already made a bit of money in Rhodesia before the war broke out and I got a commission. At any rate I've enough to start on as a married man, enough to give you a decent outfit and your passage out here and have a honeymoon before we start work on our future home. Darling Vivie! Do think about it. You'd never regret it. I'm a very different Frank to the silly ass you knew in the old Haslemere days. Now here's a five pound note to cover the cost of a full cable to say "yes," and when you'll be ready to start. When I get your answer--somehow I feel it'll be "yes"--I'll send

you a draft on a London bank to pay for a suitable trousseau and your passage from London to Cape Town, and of course I'll come and meet you there, where we can be married. I shan't sleep properly till I get your "yes."

Your ever loving and always faithful
FRANK.

P.S. There's a poor fellow here in the same ward dying--I should say--of necrosis of the jaw--Vavasour Williams is his name or a part of his name. His father was at Cambridge with my old man, and--isn't it rum?--he was a pupil of Praddy's!! He mucked his school and 'varsity career, thought next he'd like to be an architect or a scene painter. My dad recommended Praddy as a master. He worked in the Praed studio, but got the chuck over some foolery. Then as he couldn't face his poor old Governor, he enlisted in the Bechuanaland Border police, came out to South Africa and got let in for this show. The doctors and nurses give him about a month and he doesn't know it. He can't talk much owing to his jaw being tied up--usually he writes me messages, all about going home and being a good boy, turning over a new leaf, and so on. I suppose the last person you ever see nowadays is the Revd. Sam Gardner? You know they howked him out of Woodcote? He got "preferment" as he calls it, and a cure of souls at Margate. Rather rough on the dear old mater--bless her, always--She so liked the Hindhead country. But if you run up against Praddy you might let him know and he might get into touch with Vavasour Williams's people--twig?--F.G.

Vivie rose to her feet half-way through this letter and finished it standing by the window.

She was tall--say, five feet eight; about twenty-five years of age; with a well-developed, athletic figure, set

off by a smart, tailor-made gown of grey cloth. Yet although she might be called a handsome woman she would easily have passed for a good-looking young man of twenty, had she been wearing male costume.

Her brown-gold hair was disposed of with the least ostentation possible and with no fluffiness. Her eyebrows were too well furnished for femininity and nearly met when she frowned--a too frequent practice, as was the belligerent look from her steely grey eyes with their beautiful Irish setting of long dark lashes. She had a straight nose and firm rounded chin, a rather determined look about the mouth--lower lip too much drawn in as if from perpetual self-repression. But all this severity disappeared when she smiled and showed her faultless teeth. The complexion was clear though a little tanned from deliberate exposure in athletics. Altogether a woman that might have been described as "jolly good-looking," if it had not been that whenever any man looked at her something hostile and forbidding came into the countenance, and the eyebrows formed an angry bar of hazel-brown above the dark-lashed eyes. But her "young man" look won for her many a feminine friendship which she impatiently repelled; for sentimentality disgusted her.

The door of the partners' room opened and in walked Honoria Fraser. She was probably three years older than Vivie and likewise a well-favoured woman, a little more matronly in appearance, somewhat after the style of a married actress who really loves her husband and has preserved her own looks wonderfully, though no one would take her for less than twenty-eight.

At the sight of her, Vivie lost her frown and tossed the letter on to the bureau.

Honoria Fraser had been lunching with friends in Portland Place.

Honoria: "What a swotter you are! I thought I should find you here. I suppose the staff departed punctually

at One? I've come back expressly from the Michael Rossiters to carry you off to them--or rather to Kew. They're going to have tea with the Thiselton-Dyers and then revel in azaleas and roses. I shall go out and charter a hansom and we'll drive down ... it'll be some compensation for your having worked extra hard whilst I've been away....

"I met such a delightful man at the Rossiters'!" (slightly flushing) "Don't look at me so reproachfully! There are delightful men--a few--in existence. This one has been wounded in South Africa and he's so good-looking, though the back of his head is scarred and he'll always walk with a limp.... Now then! Why do you look so solemn? Put on your hat..."

Vivie: "I look solemn because I'm just considering a proposal of marriage--or rather, the fewest words in which I can refuse it. I don't think I want to go to Kew at all ... much sooner we had tea together, here, on the roof..."

Norie: "I suppose it's Frank Gardner again, as I see his handwriting on that envelope. Well I'm sorry about Kew--I should have enjoyed it..."

Vivie (bitterly): "I expect it's that 'delightful man' that attracts you."

Norie: "Nonsense! I'm vowed to virginity, like you are ... I really don't care if I never see Major Armstrong again ... though he certainly is rather a darling ... very good-looking ... and, d'you know, he's almost a Pro-Boer, though the Boers ambushed him.... Says this war's a beastly mistake....

"Well: I'll have tea here instead, if you like, and we can talk business, which we haven't done for a fortnight. I must get out of the way of paying visits in the country. They make one so discontented with the City afterwards. I've had a feeling lately I should like to have been a farmer.... Too much of the work of the firm has been

thrown on you.... But there's lots and lots I want to talk over. I abandon Kew, willingly, and as to Major Armstrong.... However he can always find my address if he cares to..."

Vivie (sits down in one of the arm chairs and Norie takes the other): "Oh don't pity me. I love hard work and work which interests me. And as to working for you, you know there's nothing I wouldn't..."

Norie: "Oh stow that!... You've been a full-fledged partner for a year and ought to be getting callous or suspicious ... I did take some money out of the petty cash yesterday. I must remember to put it down. I took quite a lot ... for theatre tickets ... and you may be suspecting Bertie Adams ... we can't call this an Adamless Eden, can we? I wonder why we keep an office boy and not an office girl? I suppose such things will soon be coming into being. We've women clerks and typewriteresses ... Adams, I notice, is growing, and he has the trace of a moustache and is already devoted to you ... dog-like..."

Vivie: "He's still more devoted to cricket, fortunately; and as soon as Rose and Lilian had gone he was off too.... Only, I fancy, he discards Regent's Park now in favour of Hendon or Herne Hill..."

Norie: "Now, about Frank Gardner..."

Vivie: "Yes, that cablegram.... Let's frame it and send it off as soon as we can; then get tea ready. Talking of tea: I was just thinking before Frank's letter came how much good you'd done me--in many other ways than setting me up in business."

Norie: "Shut up!..."

Vivie: "How, when we first worked together, I used to think it necessary to imitate men by drinking an occasional whiskey and soda--though I loathe spirits--and smoking a cigar--ugh!--And how you drew me back to tea and a self-respecting womanliness--China tea, of course,

and cigarettes. Why should we have wanted to be like men?... much better to be the New Woman....

"As to Frank's cablegram..." (Goes to bureau, tries over several drafts of message, consults Postal Guide as to cable rates per word, and reads aloud) ... "How's this? 'Captain Frank Gardner Camp Hospital Colesberg Cape Colony. Sorry must say no Best wishes recovery writing. Vivie.' That'll cost just Two pounds and out of the balance I shall buy a good parcel of books to send him, and some strawberries and cakes for our tea." (Therewith she puts on hat carefully--for she is always very particular, in a young-gentlemanly way, about her appearance--goes out to send off cablegram from Chancery Lane post-office, buy strawberries and cakes from Fleet Street shops, and so back to the office by four o'clock. Meantime Norie is reading through some of the recent correspondence on the file.)

Vivie (on her return): "Pouf! It was hot in Fleet Street! I'm sorry for poor Frankie, because he seems so to have set his heart on marrying me. But I do hope he will take this answer as final."

Norie: "I suppose you are not refusing him for the same old reason--that vague suggestion that he might be your half-brother?"

Vivie: "Oh no! Besides I pretty well know for a fact he isn't, he simply couldn't be. I'm absolutely sure my father wasn't Sam Gardner, any more than George Crofts was. I believe it was a young Irish seminarist, some student for the priesthood whom my mother met in Belgium the year before I was born. If I ever find out more I will tell you. You haven't seen 'Soapy Sam,' the Vicar of Woodcote, or that beast, George Crofts; but if you had, you'd be as sure as I am that neither of them was my father--thank goodness! As to Frank--yes--for a short time I was fond of him--till I learnt about my mother's 'profession.' It was rather a silly sort of

fondness. He was two years younger than I; I suppose my feeling for him was half motherly ... I neither encouraged him nor did I repel him. I think I was experimenting ... I rather wanted to know what it felt like to be kissed by a man. Frank was a nice creature, so far as a man can be. But all those horrid revelations that broke up our summer stay at Haslemere four years ago--when I ran away to you--gave me an utter disgust for marriage. And what a life mine would have been if I had married him then; or after he went out to South Africa! Ghastly! Want of money would have made us hate one another and Frank would have been sure to become patronizing. Because I was without a father in the legitimate way he would have thought he was conferring a great honour on me by marrying me, and would probably have expected me to drudge for him while he idled his time away.... Oh, when I think what a life I have led here, with you, full of interesting work and bright prospects, free from money anxieties--dearest, dearest Norie--I can't thank you enough. No, I'm not going to be sentimental--the New Woman is never that. I'm going to get the tea ready; and after we've had tea on the balcony we really must go into business matters. Your being away so much the last fortnight, things have accumulated that I did not like to decide for myself..."

Norie (speaking rather louder as Vivie is now busy in the adjoining roomlet, boiling the kettle on the gas stove and preparing the tea): "Yes. And I've got lots to talk over with you. All sorts of plans have come into my head. I don't know whether I have been eating anything more than usually brain stimulating--everything has a physical basis--but I have come back from this scattered holiday full of new ideas."

Presently they are seated on camp-stools sipping tea, eating strawberries and cakes, under the striped sun-blind.

Norie continues: "Do you remember Beryl Clarges at Newnham?"

Vivie: "Yes--the pretty girl--short, curly hair, brown eyes, rather full lips, good at mathematics--hockey ... purposely shocked you by her outspokenness--well?"

Norie: "Well, she's had a baby ... a month ago ... awful rumpus with her people ... Father's Dean Clarges ... Norwich or Ely, I forget which ... They've put her in a Nursing Home in Seymour Street. Mother wears a lace mantilla and cries softly. Beryl went wrong, as they call it, with an architect."

Vivie: "Pass your cup ... Don't take all the strawberries (Norie: "Sorry! Absence of mind--I've left you three fat ones") Architect? Strange! I always thought all architects were like Praddy--had no passions except for bricks and mortar and chiselled stone and twirligig iron grilles ... perhaps just a thrill over a nude statue. Why, till you told me this I'd as soon have trusted my daughter--if I had one--with an architect as with a Colonel of Engineers--You know! The kind that believes in the identity of the Ten Lost Tribes with the British and is a True Protestant! Poor Beryl! But how? what? when? why?"

Norie: "I think it began at Cambridge--the acquaintance did ... Later, it developed into a passion. He had already one wife in Sussex somewhere and four children. He took a flat for her in Town--a studio--because Berry had given up mathematics and was going in for sculpture; and there, whenever he could get away from Storrington or some such place and from his City office, he used to visit Beryl. This had been going on for three years. But last February she had to break it to her mother that she was six months gone. The other wife knows all about it but refuses to divorce the naughty architect, and at the same time has cut off supplies--

What cowards men are and how little women stand by women! And then it's a poor deanery and Beryl has five younger brothers that have got to be educated. Her sculpture was little more than commissions executed for her architect's building and I expect that resource will now disappear ... I half think I shall bring her in here, when she is well again. She's got a very good head-piece and you know we are expanding our business ... She'd make a good House Agent ... She writes sometimes for Country Life..."

Vivie: "Ye-es.... But you can't provide for many more of our college-mates. Any more gone wrong?"

Norie: "It depends how you qualify 'wrong.' I really don't see that it is 'wronger' for a young woman to yield to 'storgé' and have a baby out of wedlock than for a man to engender that baby. Society doesn't damn the man, unless he is a Cabinet Minister or a Cleric; but it does its best to ruin the woman ... unless she's an actress or a singer. If a woman likes to go through all the misery of pregnancy and the pangs of delivery on her own account and without being legally tied up with a man, why can't she? Beryl, at any rate, is quite unashamed, and says she shall have as many children as her earnings support ... that it will be great fun choosing their sires--more variety in their types.... Is she the New Woman, I wonder?"

Vivie: "Well the whole thing bores me ... I suppose I am embittered and disgusted. I'm sick of all this sexual nonsense.... Yes, after all, I approve of the marriage tie: it takes away the romance of love, and it's that romance which is usually so time-wasting and so dangerous. It conceals often a host of horrors ... But I'm a sort of neuter. All I want in life is hard work ... a cause to fight for.... Revenge ... revenge on Man. God! How I hate men; how I despise them! We can do anything they can if we train and educate. I have taken to

your business because it is one of the crafty paths we can follow to creep into Man's fastnesses of the Law, the Stock-Market, the Banks and Actuarial work..."

Norie: "My dear! You have quite a platform manner already. I predict you will soon be addressing audiences of rebellious women.... But I am more the Booker Washington of my sex. I want women to work--even at quite humble things--before they insist on equal rights with man. At any rate I want to help them to make an honest livelihood without depending on some one man.... Business seems to be good, eh? If the first half of this year is equalled by the second, I should think there would be a profit to be divided of quite a thousand pounds?"

Vivie: "Quite. Of course we are regular pirates. None of the actuarial or accountancy corporations will admit women, so we can't pass exams and call ourselves chartered actuaries or incorporated accountants. But if women clients choose to consult us there is no law to prevent them, or to make our giving advice illegal. So we advise and estimate and do accounts and calculate probabilities. Then although we can't call ourselves Solicitors we can--or at any rate we do--give legal advice. We can't figure on the Stock Exchange, but we can advise clients about their investments and buy and sell stock and real estate (By the bye I want you to give me your opinion on the tithe question, the liability on that Kent fruit farm). We are consulted on contracts ... I'm going to start a women authors' branch, and perhaps a tourist agency. Some day we will have a women's publishing business, we'll set up a women's printing press, a paper mill.... Of course as you know I am working hard on law ... not only to understand men's roguery in every direction, but so that if necessary I can add pleading in the courts to some other woman's solicitor work. That's going to be my first struggle with Man: to claim admittance

to the Bar.... If we can once breach that rampart the Vote must inevitably follow. Oh how we have been dumb before our shearers! The rottenness of Man's law.... The perjury, corruption, waste of time, special pleading that go on in our male courts of injustice, the verdicts of male juries!"

Norie: "Just so. But can't you find a little time to be social? Why be so morose? For instance, why not come and be introduced to Michael Rossiter? He's a dear--amazingly clever--a kind of prophet--Your one confidant, Stead, thinks a lot of him."

Vivie: "Dear Norie--I can't. I swore two years ago I would drop Society and run no risk of being found out as 'Mrs. Warren's daughter.' That beast George Crofts revenged himself because I wouldn't marry him by letting it be known here and there that I was the daughter of the 'notorious Mrs. Warren'; whereupon several of the people I liked--you remember?--dropped me--the Burne-Joneses, the Lacrevys. Or if it wasn't Crofts some other swine did. But for the fact that it would upset our style as a firm I could change my name: call myself something quite different....

"D'you know, I've sometimes thought I'd cut my hair short and dress in men's clothes, and go out into the world as a man ... my voice is almost a tenor--Such a lark! I'd get admitted to the Bar. But the nuisance about that would be the references. I'm an outlaw, you see, through no fault of mine.... I couldn't give you as a reference, and I don't know any man who would be generous enough to take the risk of participating in the fraud.... unless it were Praed--good old Praddy. I'm sure it's been done now and again. They call Judge FitzSimmons 'an old woman.' Well, d'you know, I believe he is ... a wise old woman."

Norie: "Well: bide a wee, till our firm is doing a roaring business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner,

p'raps. Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they might throw up their jobs and go elsewhere..."

Vivie: "You may be quite sure I won't let you down. Moreover I haven't the money for any vagaries yet, though I have an instinct that it is coming. You know those Charles Davis shares I bought at 5s. 3d.? Well, they rose to 29s. whilst you were away; so I sold out. We had three hundred, and that, less commissions, made about £350 profit; the boldest coup we have had yet. And all because I spotted that new find of emery powder in Tripoli, saw it in a Consular Report....

"I want to be rich and therefore powerful, Norie! Then people will forget fast enough about my shameful parentage."

Norie: "How is she? Do you ever hear from or of her now?"

Vivie: "I haven't heard from her for two years, since I left her letters unanswered. But I hear of her every now and again. No. Not through Crofts. I suppose you know--if you take any interest in that wretch--that since he married the American quakeress he took his name off the Warren Hotels Company and sold out much of his interest. He is now living in great respectability, breeding race horses. They even say he has given up whiskey. He has got a son and has endowed six cots in a Children's hospital. No. I think it must be mother who has notices posted to me, probably through that scoundrel, Bax Strangeways ... generally in the London Argus and the Vie-de-Paris--cracking up the Warren Hotels in Brussels, Berlin, Buda-Pest and Roquebrune. What a comedy!...

"There's my Aunt Liz at Winchester--Mrs. Canon Burstall--won't know me--I'm too compromising. But I'm sure her money-bags have been filled at one time

--perhaps are still--out of the profits on mother's 'Hotels.'..."

Norie: "I didn't remember your aunt was married ... or rather I suppose I did, but thought she was a widow, real or soi-disant..."

Vivie: "So she is, after four years of happy married life! My 'uncle' Canon Burstall--Oh what a screaming joke the whole thing is!... I doubt if he was aware he had a niece.... Don't you remember he was killed in the Alps last autumn?..."

Norie: "I remember your going down to see your aunt after you broke off relations with your mother in--in--1897...?"

Vivie: "Yes. I wanted to see how the land lay and not judge any one unfairly. Besides I--I--didn't like being dependent entirely on you--at that time--for support: and Praed was in Italy. I knew that Aunt Liz, like mother, was illegitimate--and guessed she had once made her living in the higher walks of prostitution--she was a stockbroker's mistress at one time--. But she had married and settled down at Winchester ... She met her Canon--the Alpine traveller ... in Switzerland. I felt if she took no money from mother's 'houses,' I could perhaps make a home with her, or at any rate have some kith and kin to go to. She had no children.... But--I must have told you all this years ago?--she almost pushed me out of her house for fear I should stay till the Canon came in from the afternoon service; denied everything; threatened me as though I was a blackmailer; almost looked as if she could have killed me and buried me in the garden of the Canonry....

"I've examined the business of the Warren Hotels Ltd. since then, but it's a private company, and all its doings are so cleverly concealed.... Aunt Liz doesn't figure amongst the shareholders any more than Crofts does. That horrid Bax holds most of the shares now, and

mother the rest.... Yet Aunt Liz must be rich and she certainly didn't get it from the Canon, who only left a net personality of under £4,000.... I read his will at Somerset House.... She has had her portrait in the Queen because she gave a large subscription to the underpinning of Winchester Cathedral and the restoration of Wolvesey as a clergy house.... Mother must be very rich, I should judge, from certain indications. I expect she will retire from the 'Hotels,' some day, wipe out the past, and buy a new present with her money.... She'll have her portrait in the Queen some day as a Vice-President of the Girls' Friendly Society!... And yet she's such a gambler and a rake that she may get pinched over the White Slave traffic.... I was on tenterhooks over that Lewissohn case the other day, fearing every moment to see mother's name mixed up with it, or else an allusion to her 'Hotels.' But I fancy she has been wise enough--indeed I should guess that Aunt Liz had long ago warned her to leave England alone as a recruiting ground and to collect her chambermaids, waitresses, musicians, typists from the Continent only--Austria, Alsace, Bohemia, Belgium, Italy, the Rhineland, Paris, Russia, Poland. Knowing what we British people are, can't you almost predict the bias of Aunt Liz's mind? How she would solace herself that her dividends were not derived from the prostitution of English girls but only of 'foreigners'?..."

Norie: "You seem to have studied the geography of the business pretty thoroughly!..."

Vivie (bitterly): "Yes. I have talked it over with Stead from time to time. I believe he has only spared mother and the Warren Hotels out of consideration for me ... He wants me to change my surname and give myself a chance..."

Norie: "I see" (pausing). "Of course it is rather an idea, as you refuse to disguise yourself by marriage.

You'd change your name and then listen with equanimity to fulminations against the Warren Hotels. But there would be an awkwardness in the firm. We oughtn't to change our title just as we are getting a good clientèle.... I must think ... If only we could pretend you'd been left some property--but that sort of lie is soon found out!--and had to change your name to--to--to. Oh well, we could soon think of some name beginning with a W--Walters, Waddilove--Waddilove is a delicious name in cold weather, suggesting cotton-wool or a warm duvet--or Wilson--or Wilberforce. But I'm afraid the staff--Rose Mullet and Lily Steynes and the amorous Bertie Adams--would think it odd, put two and two together, and guess right. Warren, after all, is such a common name. And we've got so used to our three helpers, we could hardly turn them off, and take on new people whom perhaps we couldn't trust.... We must think it over....

"Now I must go back to Queen Anne's Mansions and sit a little while with Mummy. Come and dine with us? There'll only be us three ... no horrid man to fall in love with you.... You needn't put on a low dress ... and we'll go to the dress circle at some play afterwards."

Vivie: "But those papers on my desk? I must have your opinion for or against..."

Norie: "All right. It's half-past five. I'll give them half an hour's study whilst you wash up the tea things and titivate. Then we'll take a hansom to Quansions: the Underground is so grimy."