y, who is an artist's model. No need to work just now
though, for the last gentleman that painted her took a fancy to her and
is paying for her at present. Drawing-room floor, old foreign lady who
never seems to get out of bed. Second floor, retired army officer, 'fond
of drink, more's the pity,'" she mimicked Mrs. Carew's voice, "and
second floor back, young lady actress, who is not perhaps as good as she
might be, 'but there, you can't always be blaming people'; and third
floor, me! Doesn't sound respectable does it? But after Miss Nigel I am
afraid of respectability."

Rose watched her with narrowed eyes. "It sounds anything but
respectable," she agreed; "do not make a fool of yourself, kid, it won't
be worth it, it never is."

"I am not likely to," Joan answered her. "My one real regret in leaving
Shamrock House is that I shall not have you to talk to, oh, and the
baths. Mrs. Carew does not hold with carrying too much water up these
stairs."

"I am glad I rank before the baths," Rose laughed. She extricated
herself from behind the luggage. "I will come and look you up
sometimes," she announced, "though it probably won't be often; I am a
bad hand at stirring myself out to see anyone in the evenings.
Good-night, and I hope you will get on all right with Strangman, he is a
kind little man really."

She went. Joan sat listening to her feet echoing down the stairs; a
mouse could set the whole house creaking. She felt very much alone;
Shamrock House, full as it had been of uncongenial companions, had yet
been able to offer some distraction from one's own society.

The new office, to which she wended her way on the Monday morning, lay
in a side alley opening off Fleet Street, a rickety old building, busy
as a hive of bees in swarming time. The steep, wooden stairs, after she
had been asked her business by the janitor in the box office and put in
charge of a very small, very dirty boy, led her up and up into the heart
of the building--past wide-open doors where numerous men sat at desks,
the floor round them strewn with papers; up again, past rooms where the
engines throbbed and panted, shaking the building with their noisy
vibrations; up still further, till they landed her at that withdrawn and
sacred sanctum, the Editor's room. Here worked Mr. Strangman
and his satellites; spiders, in fact, in the centre of their
cleverly-constructed web, throwing out feelers in search of news to all
quarters of the globe.

Anythi