ANGEL PAVEMENT

things you wanted, and if you went late, the assistants,
who had not drawn a proper breath for several hours,
hated the sight of you and would not help. At last the
army of advertising managers, copy writers, commercial
artists, colour printers, window dressers, bill posters,
which had been screaming "Buy, buy. Christmas is
coming. Buy, buy, buy" for weeks and weeks, was
charging to victory. London was looting itself. Those
damp, dark afternoons seemed to rain people down into
the shopping streets; whole suburbs burst upon Oxford
Street, Holborn, Regent Street; the shops themselves
were full, the pavements were jammed, and the vehicles
on the crowded road could hold no more. Never before
had Miss Matfield seen so many boxes of figs and dates,
obscenely naked fowls, cheeses, puddings in basins, be-
ribboned cakes, and crackers, so much morocco and limp
leather and suede and pig-skin, so many calendars,
diaries, engagement books, bridge scorers, fountain-pens,
pencils, patent lighters, cigarette-holders, dressing-cases,
slippers, handbags, manicure sets, powder-bowls, and
"latest novelties." There were several brigades of
Santa Clauses, tons and tons of imitation holly, and
enough cotton-wool piled in the windows and dabbed
on the glass to keep the hospitals supplied for the next
ten years. Between those festive windows and a line of
hawkers, street musicians, beggars, there passed a million
women dragging after them a million children, who,
after a briej space in some enchanted wonderland, were
dazed, tired, peevish, wanting nothing but a rest and
another bun. From a million bags, bags of every con-
ceivable shape and colour, money, wads of clean pound
notes straight from the bank, dirty notes from the vase
on the mantelpiece, half-crowns and florins from the tin