THEY   ARRIVE	35
back of his mind, that little office boy still lived, to
mark the wonder of it. Going round to the bank, where
he was known and respected and told it was a fine day
or a wet day, was part of the routine of his work, but
even now it was something more than that, something
to be tasted by the mind and relished. The "Good
morning, Mr. Smeeth," of the bank cashiers at the
counter still gave him a secret little thrill. And, unless
the day had gone very badly indeed, he never con-
cluded it, locking the ledger, the cash books, and the
japanned box for petty cash, away in the safe and then
filling and lighting his pipe, without being warmed by
a feeling that he, Herbert Norman Smeeth, once a mere
urchin, then office boy and junior clerk to Willoughby,
Tyce and Bragg, then a clerk with the Imperial Trading
Co., then for two War years a lance-corporal in the
orderly room of the depot of the Middlesex Regiment,
and now Twigg and Dersingham's cashier for the last
ten years, had triumphantly arrived. It was, when you
came to think of it—as he had once boldly ventured to
point out to a friendly fellow boarder at Channel View,
Eastbourne (they had stayed up rather late, after their
wives had gone upstairs, to split a bottle of beer and
exchange confidences)—quite a romance, in its way.
And the fear that grew in the dark and came closer to
the edge of it to whisper to him, that fear did not make
it any less of a romance.
Mr. Smeeth now unlocked the safe, took out his books
and the petty cashbox, looked over the correspondence
and attended to that part meant for him, made a note
that Brown and Gorstein, and North-Western and
Trades Furnishing Co., and Nickman and Sons had not
fulfilled their promises and sent cheques, dealt with the