Sybil laughed.

“Well, I’m not at all afraid of that,” she declared.  “I could do my share.  I rather like kiddies.”

“The other departments,” Mary went on, “all need some instruction.  Would you think it worth while for one day?  If so, I should be pleased to do what I can for you.”

Sybil hesitated.  She glanced towards Brooks.

“I don’t want to give a lot of unnecessary trouble, of course,” she said.  “Especially if you are busy.  But it might be for more than one day.  You have a staff of supernumerary helpers, haven’t you, whom you send for when you are busy?  I thought that I might be one of those.”

“In that case,” Mary answered, “I shall be very glad, of course, to put you in the way of it.  I am going to my own branch this morning at Stepney.  Will you come with me?”

“If you are sure I shan’t be a nuisance,” Sybil answered, gratefully.  “Good-bye, Mr. Brooks.  I’m awfully obliged to you, and will talk it all over at the Henages’ to-night.”

The two girls drove off in Sybil’s brougham.  Mary, in her quiet little hat and plain jacket, seemed to her companion, notwithstanding her air of refinement, to be a denizen of some other world.  And between the two there was from the first a certain amount of restraint.

“Do you give up your whole time to this sort of work?” Sybil asked, presently.

“I do now,” Mary answered.  “I had other employment in the morning, but I gave that up last week.  I am a salaried official of the Society from last Monday.”

Sybil stole a swift side-glance at her.

“Do you know, I think that it must be a very satisfactory sort of life,” she said.

Mary’s lips flickered into the faintest of smiles.  “Really!”

“Oh, I mean it,” Sybil continued.  “Of course, I like going about and enjoying myself, but it is hideously tiring.  And then after a year or two of it you begin to realize a sort of sameness.  Things lose their flavour.  Then you have odd times of serious thought, and you know that you have just been going round and round in a circle, that you have done nothing at all except made some show at enjoying yourself.  Now that isn’t very satisfactory, is it?”

“No,” Mary answered, “I don’t suppose it is.”

“Now you,” Sybil continued, “you may be dull sometimes, but I don’t suppose you are, and whenever you leave off and think—­well, you must always feel that your time, instead of having been wasted, has been well and wholesomely spent.  I wish I could have that feeling sometimes.”

Despite herself, Mary felt that she would have to like this girl.  She was so pretty, so natural, and so deeply in earnest.

“There is no reason why you shouldn’t, is there?” she said, more kindly than she had as yet spoken.  “I can assure you that I very often have the blues, and I don’t consider mine by any means the happiest sort of life.  But, of course, one feels differently a little if one has tried to do something—­and you can if you like, you know.”