46 ANGEL PAVEMENT

in detective and adventure stories, humorous anecdotes,
jigging easy tunes, musical comedies, and good loud talk
in which everybody agreed with everybody else except
about things that could not matter very much to any-
body,'.disliked literature, art and music, cranks and
fanatics of every kind, most foreigners, anything or any-
body really mean or cruel (when he could see the mean-
ness and cruelty), and all the opinions that newspaper
editors asked him to dislike. He had one or two real
friends, a host of acquaintances, and a wife and two
children whom he did not understand but of whom he
was genuinely fond.

And now, after glancing through the letters, most
of which were merely offers to sell him something he
did not want, he sat on, stroking his ruddy cheek, look-
ing puzzled and feeling puzzled. After a few minutes
of this, he took a sheet of paper and carefully made
some notes upon it. He did this all the more carefully
because he felt that somehow by writing down what was
already in his head, he was really grappling hard with
the problem. Having frowned at these notes for
another minute or so, he shook himself, set his face in
hard business-like lines, reached out for a cigarette and
then remembered that there were none, and rang the
bell.

Miss Matfield appeared, or rather a notebook and
pencil appeared, with a shadow of Miss Matfield in
charge of them.

Tm sorry, Miss Matfield/' said Mr. Dersingham,
with true Old Worrelian courtesy. "I'd forgotten I'd
told you to come in. I think I'd better see Mr. Smeeth
and Mr. Goath first, and you can take down some letters
afterwards. Will you ask them to come in-and then-