g5 ANGEL PAVEMENT

two small cheques that some other people had sent, gave
Miss MatfHd three letters to type, asked Turgis to
telephone to Briggs Brothers and the London and
North-Eastern Railway, delighted Stanley by giving
him a message to take out, and, in short, plunged into
the day's work and set Twigg and Dersingham in
motion, even though Twigg had been quiet and un-
stirring for years in Streatham Cemetery, and the
present Mr. Dersingham was only in motion yet on the
District Railway, on his way to the office.

Stanley disappeared, as usual, like a shell from a gun,
before Mr. Smeeth could possibly change his mind;
Miss Matfield contemptuously rattled off her letters
(the little ping of the typewriter bell sounding like a
repeated ironical exclamation); Turgis talked down the
telephone rather gloomily; and Mr. Smeeth made the
neatest little figures, sometimes in pencil, sometimes
in ink, and opened more and more books on his high
desk. And for ten minutes or so, no word was spoken
that had not immediate reference to the affairs of die
office.

They were interrupted by the entrance of yet another
employee of the firm. This was Goath, the senior
traveller, whose job it was to visit all the cabinet-makers
in London and the home counties and to persuade them
to buy the veneers and inlays of Messrs. Twigg and Der-
singham. He entered in the usual fashion, came trail-
ing in, with one large flat foot feeling reluctantly for the
new bit of ground and the other large flat foot equally
reluctantly taking leave of the old bit of ground. He
was smoking the usual cigarette, which left a faint and
fading spurt of smoke vanishing happily into nothing
behind him. He wore the same shapeless old overcoat,