MR. SMEETH GETS HIS RISE 275

what was left of them, were different. When they met, it
meant business. Four of them had not spoken to one
another for ten years, all because of twro cottage houses
in Highbury. His wife's lot would have sold the pair
and eaten and drunk a\vay the proceeds in less than a
week.

"But it wouldn't do for us all to be alike, would it,
young lady?" he cried, almost gaily, to Miss Poppy
Sellers, who came up to him at that moment with some
invoices she had just typed.

"That's what my dad's always saying, Mr. Smeeth,"
she replied in her owrn queer fashion, half perky, half
shy. "And my mother always says, 'Well, you might try
a bit, anyway/ "

"And what does she mean by that?" asked Mr. Smeeth,
amused.

Miss Sellers shook her dark little head. "I might be
able to give a guess, and then again I mightn't. I've done
all these, Mr. Smeeth. Are they all right?"

"Well, now, let's have a look," he said, adjusting his
eyeglasses. "I might be able to tell you—and then again
I mightn't."

She laughed. She was a nice little thing, even though
Turgis had kept on grumbling about her. But he had
not grumbled so much lately. He had not done any-
thing much lately, except get on with his work—he had
done that all right—and then sit mooning. The only
time he looked lively and brisk and up-to-the-minute
was wThen Mr. Golspie came in and asked him to do
something. A queer lad, Turgis. But he was beginning
to smarten himself up a bit, that was something; he had
taken to brushing his hair and his clothes and changing
his collars a little more often; and about time, too. Mr.