gO ANGEL PAVEMENT

Matfield Even Mr. Smeeth and Mr. Dersingham him-
self were rather frightened of Miss Matfield,

"Good morning/' she cried, looking from one to the
other of them, and, as usual, putting a disturbingly
ironical inflection into her tones. "Are we all very well
this morning? Well, I'm not," and here, her voice
changed. "Oh Lord, I thought I'd never get here. That
bus journey gets fouler every morning, slower and
slower and fouler and fouler." She sat down opposite
her machine, but took no notice of it.

"You ought to try the Tube," Turgis suggested, not
very boldly or hopefully. He'had made this suggestion
before. Everything had been said before, and they all
knew it.

"Oh, I can't bear the Tube." Once more she seemed
to annihilate the whole vast organisation.

It was now Stanley's turn. "Oo, I like it. I think
it's exciting. I wish they had 'em where we live."

Miss Matfield was now busy rummaging in her hand-
bag, and all she said was "Curse!" rather like a villain in
an old-fashioned melodrama. It is only these strictly
modern young ladies, who live their own life by pound-
ing a typewriter all day and then retiring to tiny bed-
sitting rooms in clubs, these beings who are supposed to
be the inheritors of the earth, who can afford to talk like
villains in old-fashioned melodramas. Miss Matfield,
after a final and unsuccessful rummage, said "Curse!"
| again, then closed the bag with a sharp snap, seized her
|gloves, and marched them over to her coat. The other
ftwo said nothing, but looked at her. What they saw was
a girl of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, or even twenty-
nine, with dark bobbed hair, decided eyebrows, a
smouldering eye, a jutting nose, a mouth that was a dis-