Since we came back to Washington, Porter has kept it up, not letting Leila miss Barry any more than possible, and playing big brother to perfection.

It is queer how we misjudge people.  If any one had told me that Porter could be so sweet and tender to anybody, I wouldn’t have believed it.  But perhaps Leila brings out that side of him.  Now I am independent, and aggressive, and I make Porter furious, and most of the time we fight.

As I said, the house seems empty—­but I am not in it much now.  If I had not had my work, I think I should have gone crazy.  That’s why men don’t get silly and hysterical and morbid like women—­they are saved by the day’s work.  I simply have to forget my troubles while I transcribe my notes on the typewriter.

Of course you know what life in the Departments is without my telling you.  But to me it isn’t monotonous or machine-like.  I am awfully interested in the people.  Of course my immediate work is with the nice old Chief.  I’m glad he is old, and gray-haired.  It makes me feel comfortable and chaperoned.  Do you know that I believe the reason that most girls hate to go out to work is because of the loss of protection.  You see we home girls are always in the care of somebody.  I’ve been more than usually independent, but there has always been some one to play propriety in the background.  When I was a tiny tot there was my nurse.  Later at kindergarten I was sent home in a ’bus with all the other babies, and with a nice teacher to see that we arrived safely.  Then there was mother and father and Barry and Constance, some of them wherever I went—­and finally, Aunt Isabella.

But in the office, I am not Mary Ballard, Daughter of the Home.  I am Mary Ballard, Independent Wage-Earner—­stenographer at a thousand a year.  There’s nobody to stand between me and the people I meet.  No one to say, “Here is my daughter, a woman of refinement and breeding; behind her I stand ready to hold you accountable for everything you may do to offend her.”  In the wage-earning world a woman must stand for what she is—­and she must set the pace.  So, in the office I find that I must have other manners than those in my home.  I can’t meet men as frankly and freely.  I can’t laugh with them and talk with them as I would over a cup of tea at my own little table.  If you and I had met, for example, in the office, I should have put up a barrier of formality between us, and I should have said, “Good-morning” when I met you and “Good-night” when I left you, and it would have taken us months to know as much about each other as you and I knew after a week in the same house.

I suppose if I live here for years and years, that I shall grow to look upon my gray-haired chief as a sort of official grandfather, and my fellow-clerks will be brothers and sisters by adoption, but that will take time.

I wonder if I shall work for “years and years”?  I am not sure that I should like it.  And there you have the woman of it.  A man knows that his toiling is for life; unless he grows rich and takes to golf.  But a woman never looks ahead and says, “This thing I must do until I die.”  She always has a sense of possible release.