^o ANGEL PAVEMENT

important and to make a little trouble for somebody.
"You ought to have heard her. Didn't she go on!"
And, in order to show exactly how she did go on, he
opened his mouth and his eyes still wider. But then he
stopped. The outer door had been opened, and feet
were being wiped. That meant that Mr. Smeeth had
arrived, and Mr. Smeeth liked to find Stanley busy
during these first few minutes. So Stanley broke off,
and dashed at a bit of work he had saved for this
moment.

"Good morning, everybody," said Mr. Smeeth, put-
ting down his hat and his folded newspaper, and then
rubbing his hands. "It's getting a bit nippy in the morfi-
ings now, isn't it? Real autumn weather/*

You could tell at once by the way in which Mr. Smeeth
entered the office that his attitude towards Twigg and
Dersingham was quite different from that of his young
colleagues. They came because they had to come; even
if they rushed in, there was still a faint air of reluctance
about them; and there was something in their de-
meanour that suggested they knew quite well that they
were shedding a part of themselves, and that the most
valuable part, leaving it behind, somewhere near the
street door, where it would wait for them to pick it up
again when the day's work was done. In short, Messrs.
Twigg and Dersingham had merely hired their services.
But Mr. Smeeth obviously thought of himself as a real
factor of the entity known as Twigg and Dersingham: