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he wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On
Tpay-day each batch of assistants, coming down from
tea, went into the passage and joined the long line of people
waiting orderly like the audience in a queue outside a gal-
lery door. One by one they entered the office. The secretary
sat at a desk with wooden bowls of money in front of him,
and he asked the employe’s name; he referred to a book,
quickly, after a suspicious glance at the assistant, said aloud
the sum due, and taking money out of the bowl counted it
into his hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Next.’
‘Thank you,’ was the reply.
The assistant passed on to the second secretary and be-
fore leaving the room paid him four shillings for washing
money, two shillings for the club, and any fines that he
might have incurred. With what he had left he went back
into his department and there waited till it was time to go.
Most of the men in Philip’s house were in debt with the
woman who sold the sandwiches they generally ate for sup-
per. She was a funny old thing, very fat, with a broad, red
face, and black hair plastered neatly on each side of the
forehead in the fashion shown in early pictures of Queen
Victoria. She always wore a little black bonnet and a white
apron; her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the

Of Human Bondage