MR, SMEETH IS REASSURED Ql

always an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Mr. Smeeth
had sufficient routine work to carry him through the
morning, but he felt queerly insecure, not at all happy
with his books, his neat little figures, his pencil, rubber,
blue ink and red ink, now that he no longer knew what
was happening to the firm. It was like trying to post a
ledger swinging above a dark gulf.

Lunch time found him at his usual teashop, sitting
at a wet marble-topped table and waiting for his poached
egg on toast and cup of coffee. The wet morning had
perished outside, where there was even a faint gleam of
sunshine, but it had found a haven in this teashop,
which seemed to be four hours behind the weather in
the street, for it was all damp and steaming. Mr. Smeeth
was jammed into a corner with another regular patron, a
man with a glass eye, bright blue and with such a fixed
glare about it that the thing frightened you. Mr. Smeeth
was sitting on the same side as the glass eye, and as the
owner of it, who was busy eating two portions of baked
beans on toast and drinking a glass of cold milk, never
turned his head as he talked, the effect was disconcerting
and rather horrible.

"Firm we've been doing business with," said the man,
disposing of a few beans that had quitted their toast,
"has come a nasty cropper-a ve-ery nasty cropper.
Claridge and Molton—d'you know 'em? Oh, very nasty/'

"Is that so?" said Mr. Smeeth politely, looking from
his poached egg at the glaring blue eye and then looking
away again. "Don't think I know the firm."

"No, well, you mightn't," the eye continued, as if it
had its doubts about that, though. "But they've been
a well-known house in the wholesale umbrella trade for
donkeys' years, specially for ribs, handles, and tips. I