"the pay's fair and the work's easy"

"Finally he took the job in the library. The Labour Exchange hat put him on to it each Thursday morning as he drew his unemployment benefit, and he'd always turned it down. 'It's not really your cup of tea,' Mr. Pitt said, 'but the pay's fair and the work's easy for an educated man.'"

"The library was like a church hall, and very cold. The black oil stoves at either end made it smell of paraffin. In the middle of the room was a cubicle like a witness-box and inside it sat Miss Crail, the librarian".

"He noticed a girl in one of the alcoves standing on a ladder sorting large volumes. (...) She was a tall girl, ungainly, with a long waist and long legs. She wore flat, ballet type of shoes to reduce her height. Her face, like her body, had large components which seemed to hesitate between plainness and beauty".

John Le Carré: The spy who came in from the cold. 23. printing. London, Sydney: Pan Books 1981 [1963], S. 31 - 32