yhow, that, if Clare
was nursing, it must be a mug's game, and that there must be a better
field for her own energies elsewhere. With so many men going, there would
be empty places to fill.... That thought came, perhaps, as soon to Jane
as to any one in the country.

Her father's lady secretary went nursing, and Lord Pinkerton, well aware
of his younger daughter's clearheaded competence, offered Jane the job,
at a larger salary.

'Your shorthand would soon come back if you took it up,' he told her. For
he had had all his children taught shorthand at a young age; in his view
it was one of the essentials of education; he had learned it himself at
the age of thirteen, and insulted his superior young gentlemen private
secretaries by asking them if they knew it. Jane and Johnny, who had been
in early youth very proficient at it, had, since they were old enough to
know it was a sort of low commercial cunning, the accomplishment of the
slave, hidden their knowledge away like a vice. When concealed from
observation and pressed for time, they had furtively taken down lecture
notes in it at Oxford, but always with a consciousness of guilt.

Jane had declined the secretaryship. She did not mean to be that sort
of low secretary that takes down letters, she did not mean to work for
the Potter press, and she thought it would be needlessly dull to work
for her father. She said, 'No, thank you, dad. I'm thinking of the
Civil Service.'

That was early in 1915, when women had only just begun to think of, or
be thought of, by the Civil Service. Jane did not think of it with
enthusiasm; she wanted to be a journalist and to write; but it would do
for the time, and would probably be amusing. So, owing to the helpful
influence of Mr. Potter, and a good degree, Jane obtained a quite good
post at the Admiralty, which she had to swear never to mention, and went
into rooms in a square off Fleet Street with Katherine Varick, who had a
research fellowship in chemistry and worked in a laboratory in
Farringdon Street.

The Admiralty was all right. It was interesting as such jobs go, and
Jane, who was clear-headed, did it well. She got to know a few men and
women who, she considered, were worth knowing, though, in technical
departments such as the Admiralty, the men were apt to be superior to the
women; the women Jane met there were mostly non-University lower-grade
clerks, and so forth, nice, cheery young things, but rather stupid, who
thought