SO it was that Doober’s changed continually and remained always the same, as manhood dawned murkily¹ upon our Edward Albert. Doober’s, until he was wrenched² out of it by circumstances beyond his control, was the foundation of his world. But outside it a number of other human encounters were streaming past him, making suggestions to him and deflecting³ his ideas about life. The staff he worked with at North London Leaseholds⁵ was a purely⁶ male one, and his general pose towards his colleagues was of someone “a bit superior” who condescended⁷ rather than was compelled to earn. He felt he dressed better than they did. He made a certain mystery of his place of residence; he had more pocket money; most of them still lived in and paid in to their homes. But if he offended them they controlled their resentment⁸ at his airs, and he found it more agreeable to go with them to the restaurant they frequented for lunch than to sit alone. And there they met “the girls —”

The girls were still cheaper human material than the clerical staff; they functioned in another department with envelopes and postal⁹ responses of various sorts. And they mixed very cheerfully with, the boys at the lunch-time rendezvous¹⁰. There was a certain process called getting away with a nice boy, and there was a natural response in the adolescing male. A mutual¹¹ possessiveness was established, which, in those days of underpaid femininity, meant taking your girl out in the evening to a café gossip or a cinema or even a music hall, and paying for her. It was only in the latter stages of the first World War that anything like economic equality dawned on young women. And the North London Leaseholds girls found a certain stand-offishness in Edward Albert

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