He spoke about references, which left me blank; and tried to pump me, which left me frightened.

But he could do nothing, he told me, except in the way of a personal donation, and that, he assumed, was out of the question.

So I went back to the Embassy once more.

I don't know why, but this time, for some reason or other, the ambassador believed in me.
He gave me a week's trial as a sort of second deputy private secretary, indexing three-year-old correspondence and copying Roumanian agricultural reports.

Then he put me on ordinance-report work.