l right."

She had been exceptionally pleased when Mr. Strangman reluctantly gave
way. Joan would, she hoped, take kindly to newspaper work, and it might
open up new roads to her.

Meanwhile Joan had been out on her own and taken a room for herself in a
house standing in a quiet, withdrawn square in the neighbourhood of
King's Road, Chelsea. To call it a room was to dignify it by a title to
which it could lay no real claim. It was an attic, up the last rickety
flight of stairs, with roofs that sloped down within two feet of the
ground, and a diminutive window from which one could get but the barest
glimpse of the skies. Still it had possibilities, its aspect was not so
terribly common-place as had been that of the other rooms which Joan had
seen that morning. The sloping roofs, the small pane of glass which
looked out higher than the neighbouring chimney-tops, were in their way
attractive. She would take it, she told a somewhat surprised landlady,
and would pay--everything included--ten shillings a week for the noble
apartment. The "everything included" swept in breakfast--"Such as a
young lady like yourself would eat, Miss"--the woman told her, and
attendance. Suppers and fires she would have to provide for herself,
though Mrs. Carew was prepared to cook for her; lunch, of course, fell
in office hours.

On Saturday, therefore, and having forestalled Miss Nigel's request by
announcing that she was leaving for good, Joan moved her luggage over to
her new home and took possession.

"I am going to like it better than I liked being at Shamrock House," she
told Rose, who had come to assist in the moving. "It is more my own, I
can do just as I like here."

Rose was craning her neck to see out of the window's limited compass.
"Just as you like," she repeated, laughing as she spoke, "on twenty-five
shillings a week and an attic. You are not ambitious, my child."

She turned round to face the room; even in mid afternoon, with the sun
shining outside, it was dim--the corners in positive darkness. "I don't
think I should have chosen it," she said; "there is no sun, and"--she
shook the thought off--"who else is in the house, did you ask?"

"There was not any need to," Joan answered. "Mrs. Carew, that is my
landlady, you know, told me all their family histories while I was
making up my mind whether I would come or not. Wait a minute," she
paused in her unpacking to tick them off on her fingers. "There is the
ground floor lad