MISS MAT FIELD'S NEW YEAR 417

"Not a thing. But I've picked up a good many
different sorts of business in my time, and I haven't
finished yet, not by a long chalk. But I don't call this
veneer trade a proper business. It's a side-line. There's
no size to it. You might as well be selling sets o* chess-
men or rocking-horses. No size to it? no chance of real
growth, you see? It's all right for Dersingham—it's
about his mark—but then he's not really in business,
He's only got one leg in it instead of being up to the
neck in it. He thinks he's a gentleman amusing himselL
Too many of his sort in the City here. That's how the
Jews get on, and the Americans. None of that nonsense
about them."

The main road, into which they had turned now, still
showed a few lighted windows, behind which the last
orders of the year were being booked and the last entries
made in the ledgers, and there were still a few belated
clerks and typists hurrying away on each side; but com-
pared with its usual appearance, the hooting muddle of
the day and early evening, its appearance now was that
of a lighted stone wilderness. A tram came grinding
down, looking as if it expected nothing. A bus slipped
through, curiously swift and noiseless. They walked
down to the end of the road? past the narrow openings
of little streets and alleys already sunk into midnight
and the mouths of wider streets that were illuminated
emptiness. At the bottom they turned to the right. A
taxi came jogging along at that moment, and Mr.
Golspie at once claimed it, shouted "Bundle's" to the
driver, and then sat very close to Miss Matfield.

"Thought we'd go to Bundle's/' he said, "if it's all the
same to you. D'you know it?"

"I've heard of it, of course/' she told him, "but I've