og6 ANGEL PAVEMENT

of excitement. It was absurd. It was pathetic. No, it
was simply revolting.

Before she reached the office, she had completely re-
versed this judgment. There was nothing revolting
about it. Perfectly right and natural Norman Birtley
was quite decent; he liked her, admired her? perhaps was
in love with her; and she had every right to look forward
to an evening with him, to an evening out with anybody
(except girls from the Club, sharing Pit seats and sand-
wiches), for that matter. The 13 bus, grinding away
through the slight fog, agreed with this conclusion,
hinted that she was too proud, and seemed to say that
for its part it took all it could get, like the stout-hearted
Cockney it was. There was some fog too in the City,
and it was a raw yellow morning for Angel Pavement.
Everybody in the office yawned a good deal and was
rather irritable for the first two hours. It was that sort
of morning. The rest of the day was more comfortable,
but dull and slow, lumbering towards five-thirty like a
stupefied elephant. Miss Matfield had not much to do.
Mr. Golspie was out all day, and it was he who usually
kept her busy. Mr. Dersingham, who found himself
getting pink and flustered when Miss Matfield coolly
stared at him and waited, with a kind of ironic resigna-
tion, for his next halting sentence, preferred to dictate
his letters, whenever possible, to little Poppy Sellers, in
whose eyes, as he rightly suspected, he was a large fine
gentleman. The only amusing thing that happened in
the afternoon was that poor Mr. Smeetfy returning
importantly and fussily from the bank, tried to tell them
a funny story he had heard there and completely failed
to bring out the point. He was rather pathetic, Mr.
Smeeth. After that there were huge blank spaces,