270	ANGEL'PAVEMENT
his wife, she would have dosed him with half a dozen
different patent medicines and would have rushed out
for half a dozen more. She did not care for doctors, but
she loved patent medicines and would try one after
another, not as an attempt to cure some definite ailment,
for she could not claim to have one, but simply in the
hope that there would be some mysterious magic in the
bottle. Mrs. Smeeth called at the chemist's in the same
spirit in which she called on her fortune-telling friends.
Mr. Smeeth was sceptical about both, though not so
sceptical as he imagined himself to be.
Occasional little pains, however, were nothing com-
pared with the relief of seeing the firm busy again.
There had been times when he had almost hated going
to the bank, for he felt that even the cashiers were telling
one another that Twigg and Dersingham were looking
pretty rocky, but now it was a pleasure again. "Just
going round to the bank, Turgis," he would say, trying
not to sound too important. (Not that it mattered with
Turgis, who really thought Mr. Smeeth was important.
But once or twice, when he had said something like this,
he had caught a certain look, a kind of gleam, in Miss
Matfield's eye. With that young madam you never
knew.) Then he would button up his old brown over-
coat, which had lasted very well, but would have to be
replaced as soon as he got a rise, put on his hat, fill his
pipe as he went down the steps, stop and light it outside
the Kwik-Work Razor Blade place, and then march
cosily with it down the chilled and smoky length of
Angel Pavement. Everywhere there would be a bustle
and a jostling, with the roadway a bedlam of hooting and
clanging and grinding gears, but he had his place in it
all, his work to do, his position to occupy, and so he did