THEY   ARRIVE	3.3
things going? You've been on the North London round
this time, haven't you? How's it going? Better than
last time, eh?"
"No," the other replied, with all the satisfaction of
the confirmed pessimist. "Worse," He took off his
bowler hat and for once examined it with the distaste
it deserved. "Much worse."
Mr. Smeeth's face fell at once, and he made a tut-
tut-tutting noise. 'That's bad."
"Bloody bad, I call it, if Ethel here'll excuse me."
Miss Matfield turned on him at once. "My name is
Matfield," she told him. "If you want to say ebloody'
you can, for all I care, but I'm not 'Ethel here' or Ethel
anywhere else, and I don't intend to be."
"I'm crushed," said Goath putting on a faint and
entirely repulsive air of vocal dandyism, "quite
crushed." But, being in his fifties, indeed, having
apparently been in them almost longer than anybody
else has ever been, and a hardened offender, he was not
crushed.
"That's all right, Miss Matfield," Mr. Smeeth told
her, uncomfortably. And he gave Goath a warning
little frown.
"Well, as I was saying," Goath continued, "things
are rotten. I've been in the trade thirty years, and I've
never known 'em worse. If the price is right, then the
stuff's wrong. And if the stuff's right, the price's wrong.
And it's mostly the price. They want it cheap now,
want it given away, no mistake about it, though the
money they're getting for the finished article is more
than ever. You look at what furniture's fetching now,
retail, and then go and hear some of 'em talk—make
sick. It would—make you sick/1