THEY GO HOME 577

MRS. DERSINGHAM, Miss Verever and Mr. and Mrs.
Pearson were playing bridge upstairs at 34, Barkfield
Gardens, in the Pearsons' drawing-room. Mr. Dersing-
ham should have been there, but he had telephoned to
say that urgent business kept him at the office, so Miss
Verever, who was usually abroad at this time of the year
but had stayed in London because she was quarrelling
with her solicitors, had taken his place. She was always
ready to take anybody's place at any dining or bridge
tables, though she never gave the least sign that she was
enjoying herself. The card table was in the middle of
the room, and there was only just space enough for it
and its four players, in spite of the fact that this was a
large room, larger than any of the Dersinghams' down-
stairs. The trouble was that the Pearsons had so many
things. They had furnished the room first with good
solid late Victorian furniture, and then they had poured
into it the glittering East, all the loot of Singapore. If
the Federated Malay States had been destroyed by an
earthquake and a great tidal wave, their life could have
been re-constructed out of that room, which put any
missionary exhibition to shame. Everybody looked out
of place in it, and nobody more out of place than the
Pearsons themselves.

They were now playing their third rubber of auction.
Mrs. Dersingham had Mr. Pearson for her partner, and
they were not badly paired, for she xvas rather a bold,
slap-dash player, while he was very dull, cautious,
obvious, though he always tried to give the impression
of immense cunning. Nobody believed in this cunning

u