THEY   ARRIVE	<?1
contented crimson curve, and a firm round chin that
was ready to double itself at any moment. She was not
pretty, but she might have been handsome if somebody
had kept telling her she was pretty. She was a trifle
taller and bigger-boned than the average girl of her class
and type, with a good neck and good shoulders, but her
figure as a whole—and it was plain to the view in her
belted orange-coloured jumper, her short dark skirt,
and artfully silky stockings—was perhaps too top-
heavy, too masterful in the bust for the flattened calves
below, to please everybody. (Including that distant and
wistful connoisseur, Turgis, who by making an effort
at times was able to see her as a female figure and not
as a personality.) For the rest, her face, her voice, her
manner, all pointed to the conclusion that Lilian Mat-
field nursed some huge, some overwhelming grievance
against life, but though she gave tongue to a thousand
little grievances every day, she never mentioned the
monster. But there it was, raging away, when she was
complaining or being bitter about everything; and
there it was, raging away more furiously than ever, when
she was being bright and jolly, which was not often, and
hardly at all during business hours.
'The char must have got my note/' she announced on
her return to her table, "but I must say she doesn't seem
to have done much about it. Look at that. This is the
foulest office I've ever worked in. She never makes any
attempt to clean it properly. All she's done now is to
walk round with a duster. And we've got to spend all
day in the beastly place, all filthy, just because she won't
take the least trouble. Well, I'm going to make a row
, about it."
"She got it all right," cried Stanley, delighted to be