MISS MATFIELD WONDERS 213

thing had to be done about Mr. Golspie, who would
have appeared to most of the girls, as Miss Matfield knew
only too well, a gigantic find, a mine of glittering
material. So far he had merely passed as "weird/' but
that would not do. It had not sufficed in Miss Mat-
field's private thoughts since the first two days.

She knew exactly what she thought about the others
at the office. Mr. Dersingham she neither liked nor dis-
liked; she merely tolerated him, with a sort of easy con-
tempt; he was "sloppy and a bit feeble," and a familiar
type, with nothing at all weird about him. Smeeth
seemed to her a vaguely pathetic creature who lived a
grey life in some grey suburb; the pleasure he got from
what seemed to her his drudgery sometimes irritated
her, but at other times it roused something like pity;
and when she was not despising him, she liked him.
Turgis she despised and occasionally resented. She
resented his shabbiness and dinginess, his unhealthy
skin and open mouth, his whole forlorn air, simply be-
cause these things, which were always there in the office,
beside her, hurt her own pride by indicating the in-
dignity of her situation. Occasionally, perhaps after a
week-end in the country, when the thought of going
back to Angel Pavement almost—as she said—made her
feel sick, there flashed through her mind an image of
Turgis. There had been moments when she had felt
sorry for him, but they were very rare. Stanley and the
funny little Cockney girl she tolerated and even liked,
so long as they behaved themselves, and they might have
been a couple of amusing little animals, a pair of
spaniels perhaps, inferior and somewhat neglected. All
these people were securely in their places. But not Mr.
Golspie, the mysterious, large, jocular, brutal man, who