LADIES' COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5584, 6 June 1896, Page 3

LADIES' COLUMN.

ROSAMOND'S RUSE. [By Richmond Donne.] Chatter I. , _ Half -past nine struck, and tho various clerks of Messrs Benedict, Wyekoff and Benedict, solicitors, were assembling from Jdivers directions, oonio on bicycles, some and all scuttling up the office jsteps as if they had a busy day before :them. At the same time arrived Miss Aahcroftfc their girl shorthand and typewriter, wheeling gracefully along, and dragging her machine with her up the steps, carefully stowed it away where no "boss" could take offence at it; then went upstairs to- her own room. There she took off her hat and gloves, opened her window, and began to enter up her journal for, the •day "before. A- shrill squeak from her speaking tube made her jump, before she had written more than three lines. • "Bring your nots-book." : It was the august voice of tho senior ■partner, and his clerk . knew, him well enough to lose no time in seizing fountain pen and notebook, and presenting herself at his- door. . "I know he's in a bad temper," she thought ; " a fearf ul crabstick, I'm sure," and boldly knocked and entered, expecting jfco find her employer pip 9in mouth, ready ~<o dictate long, complex letters to her :rithbis back towards her, and a temper s hat was too short to go the length of more two repetitions at most. On such •lays as this even " watching his mouth " ras qnt of the question, for the excellent ■easonthafc his month could not be seen rom her seat; and his agonised shorthand writer got hotter and hotter with the effort to hear, and piteous anxiety not to rex the exacting lawyer by a wrong reference to an obscure case, or a "mortgagor" for " mortgagee." This morning, however, he was leaning back in his chair — amoking, certainly — but with, his correspondence u&opened, while with, him was a fresh-faced,,plump, elderly gentleman, who looked with interested disapprobation at the girl-clerk, evidently .wondering, as- Rosamond did not fail to observe, " how Benedict could be such a fool."- "'■ /• ; . '.' " ■'■•" '.; ;;. "I want you to take a memorandum, Miss Ashcroft, please. I want it got on with at once too; you mustn't take anything else till you have done it. Memorandum for the Dunedin Weekly Press Company, Limited, respecting Libel. This is an action brought by Mrs " "Yes," said the fresh faced gentleman severely, frowning at Rosamond ; " a woman got us into the mesa, and it does not seem quite right that another woman should help, even quite indirectly, to get as out of it. Are you quite sure that Miss — this young lady understands — cr — the importance." " Quite, I assure you," said the lawyer. " Miss Asheroft understands . thoroughly the importance of keeping her own counsel." "m be hanged if I ever let a woman write for my paper again," said the old gentleman, who did not wish to be mollified, and had only just managed to think of some fresh failing of the female sex in time to prevent the lawyer from continuing his dictation. " For thirty years I pnded myself on keeping all woman's work out of it, then the moment I relax my rule this is the result. We are dragged into an action for libel, just through feminine indiscretion and folry, a woman's .unguarded tongue, which- she will never learn to hold. How should a woman know tho law of libel, and what does she careabout it, pray ?" " Bnt you saw it before it was published, and knew the law of libel, too," put in Rosamond under her breath, blushing scarlet, partly because she had committed , a breach of office etiquette, and partly because she wa3 deeply interested and excited. Tho fresh-faced gentleman looked still more severe after this new piece of feminine'inconsequence, aad having nothing by way of an answer, he snortedjufldly. The lawyer, who never betrayed his thoughts, and rarely his feelings, stole an amused glance at the fluffy brown head bending over the note-book. In his own way he wasrafcherpartial to his girl clerk, and if he had been an indulgent man, he might have slightly indulged her. As it was, however, when she transcribed her notes wrongly (oftener than not through an over-anxiety to please, which increased her natural nervousness), or made a small mistake, or, worse still, did not see when he had made one, she only got a little more severely blamed, a little more sat upon than if she had been the man she was so often blamed for not being. Her predecessor had had the sense to belong to the male sex, and had also had three times her experience; bnt the representatives of justice and equity did not take that into consideration. " Can't expect a girl to be as good as a man, you know," they said and solemnly wagged their heads and expected their girl clerks to do without instruction what it had taken years to knock into the heads of their male clerks. Experience had taught Rosamond that such wa3 the state of things, and she took ■it all very philosophically, expecting nothing better. "Mr Benedict, instead of continuing his draft, turned to hia client, saying: — " This young lady is very ambitious, and has a great leaning towards journalism. Indeed, she has — at least so I am told — already tried her hand with several papers, - and with considerable success. Is not that ' so, Miss Ashcroft?" Rosamond's cheeks were hotter than ever, and her heart beat ninety to the dozen. ' " Oh ! I have written some things Most of them have been taken,; too, for I have really had splendid luck so far. I ami sure I should be more useful in a newspaper, office that in any other." " Very wrong, very wrong indeed," said. the newspaper editor, for such he was, and very high in his profession, too, almost- as high as he thought he was himself ; "a most top?y-turvey state of affairs. Most ■'ii'-:':.3tcl" for, girls going into all sorts of , -ii!.x= ii^o this, and taking the bread from ;;'r- a- r :. Who is going to take care of bi'm-.o and the children, I should like ino?7, when this is the sort of thing • ( t goes en. 'New woman' has lately :?ii added to the list of terms not to be . :=.'-t"., which, I have stuck up over every ..■•o.-loi.* and paragraph writer's desk, so it / ui<in'i do for me to use it myself, but -;u my r/ord,. I feel very much inclined fie- bo, for fchere is nothing else which so •w J expresses what I mean. I have made • !i r- wj ±niud, however, that my paper shall 7 ,:i.ve. nothing more' to do with women; not j • .". line ■ffi'lcten by them shall be published it. lilverything they write can be much better written by men. You can always tell a woman's writing at once, as soon as you have read the first line, very often. And as for letting a girl into my office, flirting with my clerks and tattling about what was going on inside the office," all ' over the place, I fancy myself. — I fancy myself, indeed ! It is monstrous women trying to oust men like this, especially ■when they are not half as good." And his pink cheeks became red with righteous • indignation, and with the thought of the scathing leaders and subleaders he was going to write, mighty arguments that would settle the foolish pretensions of presumptuous women for ever. Rosamond's cheeks burned,' positively scorched; she was so excited that she could hardly sit still. A grand idea, a colossal scheme, surged in her brain. How was she ever to do her work all the day, till evening, when she would be able to think it out. The sagacious lawyer listened patiently to this harangue, and lo3t none of its effect on Eosamond. "Women certainly do foolish things, sometimes," he began. " Sometimes !" cried the irascible editor, " yes, ' sometimes ' they do." " But in this office we do not, do we Miss Ashcroft V turning to his girl clerk, whose brain was in too much of a whirl to give an intelligible answer. Her eyes sparkled and danced with suppressed and half -concealed delight, and there was an ominonscurve {iboutthejnonth€hatalacmed tho lawyer,

had heard about Rosamond with her favourite brother, knew a great deal more about her than that young lady imagined possible. After a moment's pause, therefore, he resumed his dictation, and allowed the worthy editor to regain his equilibrium. Rosamond took him down patiently, and in every interval hatched her plot. Chapter 11. Eleven o'clock that night found Rosamond sitting on the side of her bed making up her mind. She clasped her brown, type-writer ink-stained hands, and doggedly shook her head. "I'll do it," she murmured to herself; '•' in a week I will have an article in his paper, and one that won't do much harm to the, excellent reputation of the Dunedin Weekly Press, either. Anderson can sign itTfor me, and address the envelope and sign the letter accompanying, and .address, the wrapper, and all that. I'll do it." Then die lay stretched out full length i on the top of .her bed, her feet' on the 1 pillow and her head down at tho foot of the bed, a position % which long experience bad convinced her ~ was particularly conducive to reflection — and sometimes, also, to sleep. Presently she laughed aloud with glee, and, jumping up, hastily scribbled the following note : — " Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington. "Dear Miss Demment, — In the office to-day I met a conceited old gentlemen who asserted that he was ne^er going to have anything more to do with women (not that the women would be much worse off for that), never going to let them write in his paper, the Dunedin Weelily Press ; never going to have one in his offic:\ and all becaitso one wouiaa had sent Lira something for insertion in his columns which was libelloue, and he, instead of rejecting or altering it, published it, and gets himself into an action for libel accordingly. Of course he then binme3 the woman for his own fault, with the masculine logic we hear so much about and are pitied for not possessing. On the same principle that we hear about the sea-serpent, I s think. Perhaps I bad better borrowyour new dictionary to look up the word "logic" in, as I may have mistaken its meaning. ' Now I want you to help me carry out a splendid plan I have formed, and hoax this editor. You knew the question of the admission of women to Parliament. Education Boards^, Charitable Aid Boards; &c., which is oceupyingpeople'smindsagooddea]now,and which I foresee will be one of the next subjects he will be tackling. I read his paper a good deal., and I am sure he has not said much about it y«t. Simply to mention the subject to a good many people is like holding the proverbial red rag to a bull. Well, you have more imagination than I have, and I want you to write from the point of view of an extremist on the • side of conservatism ; aitack the present Government ; get out the pepper-pot and use it all round, in fact lo your smartest. Raise your hauds in pious horror at the unseemly state of society which must inevitably follow upon the admission of females to Parliament, and lifting woman out of the sacred sphere generally. I will wait till your article has appeared, and write a reply going at you hammer and tongs, and slashingyou up finely. We will have old Mr Sanderson my friend nicely. Are you on ? Answer quickly/for the paper, which ought to come from you, must ba sent before Tuesday next, and this is Thursday. Then, when it is all over, we will send him a polite note, telling all about it. If you won't help me, then I must do it all by myself, only it will be awkward, for, of course Anderson will sign for me, while you. write a hand that is always mistaken for a man's, at least the signature is, and of course we will both typewrite every word of the articles themselves; but if I wrote both the articles and the replies, I should hava to let another fellow intothesecret ; I could not send them both with the same signature, and I do not know whom to get. But I've made up my mind, and if s going to be done. — Yours, while, this machine is to her, " Rosamond Ashcroft." When Miss Demment got this letter, which arrived by an office boy at nine o'clock the next morning, she thought she might as well fall in with the plan, and make up her mind to play the part sketched out fpr her, for, indeed, it was far from displeasing to her. ' Knowing, moreover, what Eosamond's mind being made up meant, • she thought it perhaps only prudent. One person, and one only, could unmake that "mind," and that was Rosamond's dearly-beloved eldest brother, and he being more than a thousand miles away at the time, could not be relied on. So next morning at one o'clock she rang up .Rosamond. ' "Come to lunch "with me at the Trocadero," she telephoned, " I have considered your note, indeed I have done part of what you said, already, and want to talk matters -over." " Very well, only it is 'Frisco mail today, and I must be back before two o'clock" was the answer, and five minutes more saw both girls cycling up Willis Street in the direction of the Trocadero. There they found the quietest corner, and concocted their deep-laid plot.