d document, and one would
rush off to the Chief. "Oh! Here you are at last. What a time you've
been. Now, let me see what you say.... Well, that seems all right. But
stop. Show me on the map where this place B---- that you mention is.
One of them may ask." They were just a little exhausting, those
occasions.

What exactly the tomfoolery is that expert typists engage on after
they have typed a document, I have never been able to discover. As
long as they are at play on their machines these whirr like the
propeller of a Handley-Page. They get down millions of words a minute.
But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to
nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch
feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they
muse and they adorn. It is not the slightest use intimating that you
do not care twopence whether there are typographic errors or not--the
expert typist treats you with the scorn that the expert always does
treat the layman with. At such junctures it is an advantage if the
typist happens to be a he, because you can tell him what you think of
him. If the typist happens to be a she, and you tell her what you
think of her, the odds are she will take cover under a flood of tears,
and goodness only knows what one is supposed to do then. Not that my
typists were not highly meritorious--I would not have exchanged them
with anybody. They merely played their game according to the rules.

Lord K. could no doubt be really unreasonable on occasion; but I can
only recall one instance of it in my own experience. It all arose over
our Military Attache at our Paris embassy, Colonel H. Yarde-Buller,
having taken up his abode from an early date at Chantilly so as to be
in close touch with General Joffre's headquarters. Not being on the
spot at the Embassy, his work in the meantime was being done, and very
well done, by our Naval Attache, Captain M. H. Hodges. I do not know
why it was, but one afternoon the Chief sent for me to say that a
Military Attache was required at once in Paris, and that I was to
proffer names for him to choose from forthwith. After consultation
with my French experts, I produced a list of desirable candidates for
the post, all, to a man, equipped with incontestable qualifications.
But Lord K. would have none of my nominees, although he probably knew
uncommonly little about any of them. I tried one or two more casts,
but the Chief was really f