oog	ANGEL    PAVEMENT
"Completely mad." But why did nothing like that
ever happen to her? "What are you going to do?"
"My dear, I'm going to take one of them. Wouldn't
you? But which, I don't know. What do you think?"
"Let's get our coffee/' said Miss Matfield. 'Then we
can talk about it afterwards."
This was a blow. Whether Ansdell went off to Canada
and Australia or joined her mother at the antique shop,
she was lost to the Burpenfield. Another decent and
amusing one gone! Something exciting happening to
somebody else, as usual! And Miss Matfield was so busy
feeling sorry for herself that if her advice had really been
demanded over the coffee, she would not have found it
easy to give it. Miss Ansdell, however, like many people
who ask to be advised, apparently only wanted a listener,
for she never stopped talking herself, and when she put
a question, promptly answered it without giving her
friend time to frame a reply.
When they came up from the dining-room, they saw
a tall figure standing just inside the entrance hall "I
believe it is," Miss Ansdell gasped. "Yes, it is. It's
Father. Oh, help!"
And Major Ansdell it was. Miss Matfield had met
him, just for a few minutes, two or three times before.
He was still a handsome, soldierly looking man, though
quite elderly, and was immensely courteous in the Roger
de Coverley style to all Evelyn's friends. But there was
in him an extraordinary theatrical strain. Quite fre-
quently he behaved as if he were the hero of some old-
fashioned melodrama; and was very emotional, very
rhetorical, and absurd. He was quite capable of talking
just as men talk in bad stories in popular magazines, and
Miss Matfield had sometimes wondered whether it was