Sometimes change is a good thing. You serve a noble mistress
in Miss Fraser and I am sure you realize the importance of
her work. It may mean so much for women's careers in the
next generation. I shan't quite lose touch with you. I dare
say Miss Fraser, even if I am far away, will write to me
from time to time and give me news of the office and tell me
how you get on. Don't be ashamed of being ambitious: keep up
your studies. Why don't you--but perhaps you do?--join
evening classes at the Polytechnic?--or at this new London
School of Economics which is close at hand? Make up your
mind to be Lord Chancellor some day ... even if it only
carries you as far as the silk gown of a Q.C. I suppose I
ought now to write "K.C." A few years ago we all thought the
State would go to pieces when Victoria died. Yet you see we
are jogging along pretty well under King Edward. In the same
way, you will soon get so used to the new Head Clerk, Mrs.
Claridge, that you will wonder what on earth you saw to
admire in

VIVIEN WARREN.

This letter came like a cricket ball between the eyes to Bertie
Adams. His adored Miss Warren going away and no clear prospect of
her return--her farewell almost like the last words on a death-bed....
He bowed his head over his folded arms on his office desk, and
gave way to gruff sobs and the brimming over of tear and nose glands
which is the grotesque accompaniment of human sorrow.

He forgot for a while that he was a young man of nineteen with an
unmistakable moustache and the status of a cricket eleven captain.