£20 ANGEL PAVEMENT

declared, "I must say I thought the way they allowed
that girl to carry on was ridiculous. My words, if she'd
been a girl of mine—!51

"Or mine," said Mr. Smeeth grimly.

"Still, we've had a very enjoyable evening, haven't
we, Tom?" said Mrs. Dalby, who had plainly had
nothing of the kind but was a polite woman.

After they had said good night, Mr. Smeeth remained
at the door for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet and
the cool fresh air. When he returned to the others, he
made straight for the fire and raked it together with the
poker, but did not put any more coal on it. Then he
yawned once or twice, and did not try very hard to pre-
tend he was not yawning. Ten minutes later, he told
Edna to get upstairs to bed, pointing out very firmly
that on any other night she would have been there some
time. There were signs then, after Edna had reluctantly
and with much wriggling of shoulders taken her depar-
ture, that the Mitty family was about to go, but unfor-
tunately George made his appearance and that kept
them another half-hour, towards the end of which Mr.
Smeeth merely stared at them in despair. When they
did go Mrs. Smeeth and George saw them to the door,
and Mr Smeeth stayed where he was.

Somehow the room looked as if fifty people had been
eating and drinking and smoking in it for days. There
were two sandwiches and a flattened cigarette end on the
carpet; somebody had spilled some port on the little
table; there was the glass that Fred had broken; there
were the forlorn bottles, the dirty glasses, the remnants
of food, cigarette ash, the smoke rapidly going stale: the
whole room, the pride of the house and as nice a parlour
as you would find in the length of Chaucer Road,