I go ANGEL PAVEMENT

and dance with beautiful girls with fine bare arms. But
he wasn't in that seam. He'd no evening dress; no
money; and anyhow he couldn't dance. He couldn't do
anything. No, perhaps he couldn't, but he was as good as
most of those fat rotten blighters who had the money,
who just went chucking it away while he had to count
every penny. Look at that lot in the big car, with their
fur coats and diamonds and white shirt fronts, probably
going somewhere to dance and get boozed up and God
knows what before they'd finished! Swine! He was as
good as them any day. And better—he did do some
work. What did they do? It was enough to make any
chap turn Bolshie. He didn't like the other chap who
lodged at Mrs. Pelumpton's very much; Park was a
dreary, unfriendly sort of devil, and a Sheeny at that;
but he didn't blame Park for turning Bolshie. For
two pins, he'd turn Bolshie too. Yes, but what was the
good of that?

All this time he had been walking on and on, through
a Saturday night with the bottom dropped out of it,
and now he had left the spangled West End behind him.
He stopped at a coffee stall, where several fools were
arguing about nothing as usual, and had two buns and a
cup of coffee—poor stuff it was too, too sweet and nearly
cold. As he turned his back to the counter, he saw a
girl, a really nice kid with a red hat and big dark eyes,
smiling in his direction, and he smiled back at her hope-
fully, but then he saw her eyes move slightly and the
smile instantly vanish. She had not been looking at
him before, when she smiled; she had been looking at
the chap standing next to him, who was ordering two
coffees. And what a chap to be out with, to be smiling
atl If that's what she wanted, she could have him.