MR. SMEETH IS REASSURED 95

and all smiles. "Afternoon, ev'rybody," he gasped.
'Is there a late spot of tea goin'? Doesn't matter if
there isn't. I say, Miss Matfield, just drop ev'rything,
will you, and bring your notebook to my room, I want
to dictate some letters and a circular. Stanley, you get
ready to copy the circular. And, Turgis, you ring up
Brown and Gorstein and say I want to speak to Mr.
Gorstein. And Smeeth, I shall want you when I'm
through with these letters, about a quarter of an hour's
time, and will you bring that statement of the outstand-
ing accounts right up to date and let me know all about
Gorstein's and Nickman's payments this last year?
Good man!"

Mr. Dersingham liked to signalise his arrival in this
fashion—it looked as if he was starting the day for every-
body, and it still looked like that even if he did it at five
o'clock—but now there was a difference. His voice had
a triumphant ring, in spite of the fact that he was short
of breath. There was about his whole manner a Napo-
leonic abruptness and self-confidence. He presented the
spectacle—rare enough too—of an Old Worrelian in big
business, At one bound the temperature of the office
rose about ten degrees, and Mr. Smeeth, as he investi-
gated the firm's somewhat melancholy relations with
Brown and Gorstein and Nickman and Sons, was visited
once more by quite wildly optimistic fancies. Undoubt-
edly, something had happened.

When at last he xvas called into Mr. Dersingham's
room, he soon learned what it was that had happened.
It was, as he had suspected more than once, this Mr.
Golspie,

"And the position is this, Smeeth/1 Mr. Dersingham
continued. "He's got the sole agency for all this new