work very hard, dear?" Sarah asked sympathetically.

"Absolutely feverish rush ever since I got there," he declared. "Don't
know how long my nerves will stand it. Telephones ringing, men rushing
out of the office without their hats, and bumping into you without saying
'by your leave' or 'beg your pardon,' or any little civility of that
sort, and good old Maurice, with his hair standing up on end, shouting
into two telephones at the same time, and dictating a letter to one of
the peachiest little bits of fluff I've seen outside the front rows for I
don't know how long."

"Jimmy," Sarah said sternly, "I'm not sure that the City is going to suit
you. You don't have to dictate letters to her, do you?"

"No such luck," Jimmy sighed. "She is the Chief's own particular
property. Does a thousand words a minute and knits a jumper at the
same time."

"Whom do you dictate your letters to?" Sarah demanded.

"To tell you the truth," Jimmy answered, falling on his cocktail, "I
haven't had any to write yet."

"What has your work been?" Lady Amesbury asked.

"Kind of superintending," the young man explained, "looking on at
everything--getting the hang of it, you know."

"Are the other men there nice?" Sarah enquired.

"Well, we don't seem to have had much time for conversation yet," Jimmy
replied, attacking his caviar like a man anxious to make up for lost
time. "I heard one chap tell another that I'd come to give tone to the
establishment, which seemed to me a pleasant and friendly way of
looking at it."

"You didn't have any commissions yourself?" Sarah went on.

"Well, not exactly," Jimmy confessed. "About half an hour before I
left, a lunatic with perspiration streaming down his face, and no hat,
threw himself into my room. 'I'll buy B. & I.'s,' he shouted. 'I'll buy
B. & I.'s!'"

"What did you do?" Wingate enquired with interest.

"I told him I hadn't got any," was the injured reply. "He went cut like a
streak of damp lightning. I heard him kicking up an awful hullaballoo in
the next office."

"Jimmy," Sarah said reproachfully, "that might have been your first
client. You ought to have made a business of finding him some B. & I.'s."

"There might have been some in a drawer or somewhere," Lady Amesbury
suggested.

"Distinct lack of enterprise," Kendrick put in. "You should have thrown
yourself on the telephone and asked me if I'd got a few."

"Never thought of it," Jimmy confessed. "Live and learn. First day an