20 ANGEL PAVEMENT

this room out for a change? Thank you!!

"An' thank you!" said Mrs. Cross, quite aloud and'
with grim irony, as she tore up this note and popped it in
the top of the stove. To show that she was not the kind
of woman to be dictated to in this fashion, she immedi-
ately went and gave the other room, Mr. Dersingham's
private office, a thoroughly good sweeping and dusting.
Having done that, she waddled straight across the
General Office to the other room, which, with its long
counter and cupboards and drawers and samples of wood
and litter, was the one she liked least, being always in
a terrible mess. On her way, she completely ignored the
General Office, did not even give it a look, just as if it
were full of people in the habit of leaving notes. Her
back told it very plainly that she would clean up the
office in her own way. Once in the other room, the
nasty one, she felt so pleased about this rebuff that she
set to work with a will, and for the next ten minutes
was enveloped in a cloud of dust. By the time she had
finished, there may have been very few few articles in the
room that were free from dust, but nearly all of them
had at least exchanged their old dust for another variety
that came perhaps rrom quite a distant corner. Then
she thrust back a wisp of grey hair from her swollen
face, on which time and trouble had first sketched a
few lines and then deepened them by puffing out the
surrounding flesh; she dragged her swollen feet across
to the discarded leather office chair in the corner; she
flopped into the chair and put her swollen hands-for
though she said with some truth that she worked her
fingers to the bone, hot water and soap and wet scrub-
bing brushes had piled sodden, nerveless flesh on^those
bones-in her lap, and rested. Immediately she plunged