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The book-keeping class was held in one of the ordinary classrooms, separated from others by high partitions of wood which were continued to the ceiling in panes of glass. The room was filled with forms and desks, but the class was so small that all those composing it (and there were fewer still after the first six lessons) were put into the first two or three rows of desks. The teacher was a little sandy man who made well-trodden jokes and talked in a wheezy voice well suited to his appearance. He used the blackboard, and stood upon tiptoe to scrawl upon it in a large handwriting. That was at the beginning. Later, methods developed; but for the present Sally and the others were merely initiated into the first movements of the difficult craft. With amazement she began to learn the mysteries of the signs "Dr." and "Cr.", the words "Balances", "carried forward", etc. and the meanings of such things as ruled diagonal lines. It was to her like the game of learning chess, and she had the additional pleasure of knowing that with the solution of each problem she was adding appreciably to her knowledge, and to a knowledge which henceforward would not be wasted, as she could turn it, as of all things she most desired, to immediate use. Madam's accounts would no longer be a source of trouble or bewilderment to her. She knew very soon that they would be mere child's play to her instructed intelligence.

From the teacher and the lessons, Sally turned to her fellow pupils. There were about twenty of these, the sexes almost equally represented, but with the girls in a slight majority. One or two of the young men were pale and spectacled, and so they did not interest her. The girls were generally of a higher class than her own, were obviously already employed as clerks in offices, and were rather older than herself. They were the daughters of tradesmen or clerks, and all lived at home in the better streets of the neighbourhood. They were neatly dressed, but she was easily the smartest of the audience. The other girls looked at her hair and her complexion, and then at each other; and a feud began. Sally was consoled by the evident interest of the young men, who often cast glances in her direction. She sat demurely, as if unconscious, but in her wicked heart there was glee at the knowledge that this same young person Sally, once the despised companion of May Pearcey, had in a year attained such new charm as to be attractive to these young men. She shrugged her shoulders at the thought of it. Had she been an onlooker she would have been amused or cynical. As she was the cynosure of the emotional eye of the whole class she could view the natural processes of all such gatherings with satisfaction. Her shrugs were for the respectable and alienated girls, who were like sparrows chattering over a brilliant intruder; to the young men she offered an air of imperviousness to their cajoleries which made her seem to at least three of them a young person whom it might be pleasant and titillating to know. The general arrangement of feelings towards her was evident at the third lesson. By the fourth it had taken a quite definite form. She had exchanged conversation with the three men: she had smiled provokingly at the girls. The girls mentioned her at home, and to their friends; the young men did not mention her to anybody.

The men were all older than she, were in employment, and although some of them were still at home the majority of them were in lodgings in Holloway, were lonely, and were desirous of improving their positions. This was the case with Sally's three admirers. Of the three, her immediate favourite, because he most nearly resembled Toby in physical type, was a thickset dark young man with a budding black moustache and polished eyes and a strong pink upon his cheekbones. But after she had looked at him a few times she decided that he had Jewish blood, and Jews were among her aversions. So, although his name was Robertson, she passed him over in favour of a tall, rather bony fair youth of about three and twenty with smooth hair and a lean, conceited humorous face. He had assurance, which she adored, and his great length made it queer to be talking to him, because she had to look high up to see his face. He always wore a light-coloured tweed suit, and a knitted tie of about ten different colours, and his aquiline nose and jaunty manner gave him an air of knowingness which she much appreciated. He was a stockkeeper in a publishing house, and came from the South of England. His voice was light in tone, and he had a delightful burr. This young man, Harry Simmons, became her friend and soon walked part of the way home with her after each lesson. He talked politics to her, and explained all sorts of things which she had never before known. He told her how books were made, and how they were delivered unbound in great bales; and when she said "a book" meaning "a paper," he corrected her. Sally liked him. Of the three men she now knew well he was the best-informed. Accordingly she learnt more, intellectually, from him than from either of the others. He quickly fell in love with her, which was an added pleasure; and she once or twice let him kiss her, without promising anything or revealing the existence of Toby. She never kissed Harry in return, a fact which she cherished as a proof of her innocence. But she liked him very much, and told him more about herself than she had ever told anybody else. And as there is nothing like the use of such care and such flexible and uncertain kindness, when it is not calculated, for tantalising a young man who is agreeably in love with a young girl, Sally had a new delight, a new self-flattery, to cosset. The affair did not become very desperate in Harry's case—he was too conceited, and he knew the rules of the game too well—and at length it subsided normally; but it lasted pleasantly and instructively enough for perhaps four months, and the memory for both was one of smiling amusement, untempered by chagrin. Sally's one dread in the whole course of her friendship with Harry was a dread lest Toby should see them together. That Harry should see her with Toby she did not mind, because she could at any time have relinquished Harry without a qualm; but she loved Toby, and took care to keep secret from him on their infrequent meetings anything which might disturb his ardent thoughts of the little girl he had left at home.

So book-keeping went on. And so Harry went on. But by now Sally's interests had become many, for she was leading a busy life, and the difficulty of maintaining all her affairs at the necessary pitch of freshness and importance in her attention was increasing. She had to think of her work, of Madam and her now frequent fits of illness, of Gaga, of Miss Summers, of money, of Harry, of book-keeping, of clothes, and of her mother. Mrs. Perce she rarely saw during this period, because as Sally found new preoccupations she was bound to shed some of her old ones. She thought very nicely of Mrs. Perce; but she had at the moment no time for her. Mrs. Perce belonged to a passing stage, and had not yet a niche in the new one. Toby she saw still more seldom than anybody; but for Toby Sally's feelings underwent no obvious change. They developed as her character matured, but they did not alter. She embraced him, as it were, with her mind. Toby was somehow different from all the others. He was a part of herself. She did not know why, but he stood alone, whenever she thought of him, wonderfully strange, and strong, and enduring, as much Toby as she was Sally. She did not fear him. In some ways she despised him, for being so little pliable, so little supple in his way of managing the world. But she adored him as a man, and as a simple-minded baby who unerringly made her happy by his assurance, and flighted her by behaving as though she was something belonging solely to himself. So long as she was confident that about nine-tenths of her life was outside the range of Toby's understanding, Sally enjoyed his delusion. It gave her such a sense of superiority that she relished her submission to his will in all trifles. She never felt that his absences made him a stranger. Rather, she felt that they increased and intensified her love and her desire for him. These at least were unabated—more ardent than ever. And the absences certainly made Toby all the more boisterously glad to see her whenever he returned from a voyage, and more demonstratively affectionate when they were alone together.