green world for the rest of the time, that he feels nothing but gratitude. That’s all right, from his point of view, being that sort of old man. But how dare the firm be humorously benevolent? It is no case for humour . It is not funny that prosperous people can use up lives on small fixed salaries that never increase beyond a certain point, no matter how well the employers get on, even if for the last few years they give pensions. And they don’t give pensions. If they do, they are thought most benevolent. The author, who is evidently in a way a thoughtful man, ought to have known this. He just wrote a thing that looks charming on the surface and is beautifully written and is really perfectly horrible and disgusting. Well, I suddenly thought employers ought to know. I don’t know what can be done. I don’t want a pension. I hate working for a salary as it is. But employers ought to know how fearfully unfair everything is. They ought to have their complacency smashed up.” He was engrossed. His foreign intelligence sympathised. Then she was right.
“Anyhow. The worst of it is that my employers are so frightfully nice. But the principle’s the same, the frightful unfairness. And it happened that just before I went away, just as Mr. Hancock was going off for his holiday, he had been annoyed by one of his Mudie books going back before he had read it, and no others coming that were on his list, and he suddenly said to me in a grumbling tone ‘you might keep an eye on my Mudie books.’ I was simply furious. Because before I began looking after the books—which he had never asked me to do, and was quite my own idea—it was simply a muddle. They all kept lists in a way, at least put down books when they hit upon one they thought they would like, and then sent the whole list in , and never kept a copy, and of course forgot what they’d put down. Well, I privately took to copying those lists and crossing off the books as they came and keeping on sending in the rest of the list again and again till they had all come. Well, I know a wise person would not have been in a rage and would meekly have rushed about keeping more of an eye than ever. But I can’t stand unfairness. It was the principle of the thing. What made it worse was that for some time I have