THEY ARRIVE 4!

dating now, "if you should want any typewriter sup-
plies any time, here's my card. Good morning/'

"It's surprising the number of those chaps we get
round/5 said Mr. Smeeth, rather sadly, "all trying to
sell the same bits of things. If you bought anything,
what would it amount to? A shilling or two, that's all
It beats me how they make anything out of it. Smart,
well-dressed chaps too, some of them. I don't know-
how they do it, I really don't."

"You'd think that chap was making thousands a
year," said Turgis, speaking in an aggrieved tone, as if
somehow his own shabbiness came into the question.
"He's always all dressed up, spats and everything. He
comes round here about once a fortnight and we've
never bought anything from him yet."

"He's 'oping, that's what he's doing, just 'oping, like
me," Mr. Goath remarked grimly. "Only it doesn't run
to spats with me. I'd better try 'em, then I might get a
big order or two. 'Here's old Goath with spats on/
they'd be saying up Bethnal Green way. 'We'll have to
give him an order now.' P'r'aps they would. And then
again, pYaps they wouldn't. Ah well"—and he yawned
hugely and kept his eyes closed even after the yawn
was done—"I dunno, I dunno, I dunno." He sent this
rumbling away into the mournful distance. "Fact is,
some of these mornings my inside's all wrong, dead
rotten. Doctor says it's liver—that's all because I take
a drop of whisky—but I say it's 'eart And whether its
'eart or liver, I'm going to sit down."

The room sank into a kind of mild sadness, rather
like that of the atmosphere outside, where rich autumn
had been bleached and deadened into a mere smokiness
and gathering grey twilight, in which the occasional