miss  matfield's  new   year      429
was quite different; the smile had been wiped off; his
eyebrows had descended at least an inch and a half; and
his eyes stared tragically out of deep hollows. Miss Mat-
field noticed all these details. It was queer, but though
things in general were curiously hazy, she had only to
concentrate her attention upon anything and every
detail of it, like Humpty-Dumpty's lips and eyebrows,
stood out in clear relief. This made everything seem
tremendously amusing, and she was very happy.
Humpty-Dumpty began singing now in a great rich bass
voice, which immediately plunged Miss Matfield, who
delighted in rich bass voices, into a dreamy ecstasy. He
sang one song after another, sometimes sinking into the
profoundest melancholy and the bitterness of death, and
at other times breaking into high spirits that were as
strange and wild as a revolution. With her eyes fixed
on that great yellow moon of a face from which these
entrancing sounds came, Miss Matfield allowed her
mind to be carried floating away on these changing
currents of music, and her body to rest against the
stalwart arm and shoulder of Mr. Golspie. She was
sorry when it came to an end, and Humpty-Dumpty,
after bowing, smiling, frowning, shaking his head in an
amazingly rapid succession, walked away to eat a whole
plateful of sandwiches, wash them down with lager
beer, and talk to five people at once with his mouth full
There was just time for another dance, and then it was
twelve o'clock. Everybody was silent for a moment. At
the end of that moment, they all behaved like men and
women who had been reprieved in the very shadows of
the gallows, which is perhaps how they saw themselves.
Never before had Miss Matfield seen such a raising and
clinking of glasses, so much back-slapping, hand-shak-