Page:In The Cage (London, Duckworth, 1898).djvu/7



had occurred to her early that in her position—that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie—she should know a great many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively—though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered—to see any one come in whom she knew, as she called it, outside, and who could add something to the poor identity of her function. Her function was to sit there with two young men—the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the 'sounder,' which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions, give difficult change and, more