ANGEL PAVEMENT

cold, thin, and rather featureless. Trape himself was
an Old Worrelian and a contemporary of Dersingham's.
He was a partner in a firm of estate agents, but called
himself Major Trape because he had held that rank at
the end of the War and had become so soldierly training
the vast mob of boys who were conscripted then that he
could not bring himself to say good-bye to his outworn
courtesy title. He was indeed so curt, so military, so
imperial, that it was impossible to imagine him letting
and selling houses in the ordinary way, and the mind's
eye saw him mopping up, with a small raiding party,
all flats and bijou residences, and sallying out with an
expeditionary force to plant the Union Jack on finely
timbered, residential and sporting estates. His wife was
a somewhat colourless woman, very English in type, who
always looked as if she was always faintly surprised and
disgusted by life. Perhaps she was, and perhaps that was
why she always talked with a certain ventriloquial effect,
producing a voice with hardly any movement of her
small iced features.

Leaving them all to shout at one another, Mrs. Der-
singham now slipped out of the room, for it was im-
perative that dinner should be announced as soon as
possible. She returned three minutes later, trying not
unsuccessfully to look as if she had not a care in the
world, a sort of Arabian Nights hostess, and then, after
the smallest interval, Agnes popped her head into the
room, thereby forgetting one of her most urgent instruc-
tions, and said, without any enthusiasm at all: "Please
m'. Dinner's served.'*

Mrs. Dersingham smiled heroically at her guests,
who, with the exception of Mr, Golspie3 looked at one
another and at the door as if they were hearing about