"Some of us," he admitted, dryly. "You found it hard work at first?

Sometimes, when I hear stories like yours, Miss Grant, when I pass young

girls, thin, white-faced, poorly-clothed, going to their work, with the

look of old men on their faces--I mean old men, not women, mind!--I ask

myself whether there is not some special place, with a special kind of

punishment, appointed for selfish fathers, who have consigned their

daughters to life-long toil and misery. I beg your pardon!"

"No, I don't think my father was selfish," said Celia, more to herself

than to her listener. "Not consciously so; he was sanguine, too

sanguine; he lived in the moment----"

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"I know," said Mr. Clendon. "Some men are born like that, and can't help

themselves. Well, what did you do?"

"Oh, it was what I tried to do," said Celia, with a laugh. "I tried to

do all sorts of things. But no one seemed inclined to give me a chance

of doing anything; and, as I say, I was on the point of giving in, when

I met in the street, and quite by chance, an old acquaintance of my

father. He is a literary man, an antiquarian, and he is writing a big

book; he has been writing it, and I think will continue to write it, all

his life. He wanted, or said he wanted, a secretary, someone to look up

facts and data at the British Museum; and he offered me the work.

I--well, I just jumped at it. Fortunately for me, I have had what most

persons call a good education. I know French and one or two other

foreign languages, and although I have 'little Latin and less Greek,' I

manage to do what Mr. Bishop wants. He gives me a pound a week; and

that's a very good salary, isn't it? You see, so many persons can do

what I am doing."

"Yes, I suppose so," Mr. Clendon assented; he glanced at the slight,

girlish figure in its black dress, at the beautiful face, with its clear

and sweetly-grave eyes, the soft, dark hair, the mobile lips with a

little droop at the ends which told its story so plainly to the

world-worn old man who noted it. "And you work in the Reading Room all

day?"

"Yes," said Celia, cheerfully, and with something like pride. "It is a

splendid place, isn't it? Sometimes I can scarcely work, I'm so

interested in the people there. There are so many types; and yet there

is a kind of sameness in them all. One seems to lose one's identity the

moment one enters, to become merged in the general--general----"




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