renzy of emotion, "I'll work!
Yes, by Gad, if it comes right down to it, I'll work!"

He brought his fist down with a crash on the table where Derek's
flowers stood in their bowl. The bowl leaped in the air and tumbled
over, scattering the flowers on the floor.

CHAPTER VII

JILL CATCHES THE 10.10

I

In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in
retrospect, there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces
like some tired traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road. Even
from the security of later happiness we cannot contemplate them
without a shudder.

It took one of the most competent firms in the metropolis four days to
produce some sort of order in the confusion resulting from Major
Selby's financial operations; and during those days Jill existed in a
state of being which could be defined as living only in that she
breathed and ate and comported herself outwardly like a girl and not a
ghost.

Boards announcing that the house was for sale appeared against the
railings through which Jane the parlourmaid conducted her daily
conversations with the tradesmen. Strangers roamed the rooms eyeing
and appraising the furniture. Uncle Chris, on whom disaster had had a
quickening and vivifying effect, was everywhere at once, an impressive
figure of energy. One may be wronging Uncle Chris, but to the eye of
the casual observer he seemed in these days of trial to be having the
time of his life.

Jill varied the monotony of sitting in her room--which was the only
place in the house where one might be sure of not encountering a
furniture-broker's man with a note-book and pencil--by taking long
walks. She avoided as far as possible the small area which had once
made up the whole of London for her, but even so she was not always,
successful in escaping from old acquaintances. Once, butting through
Lennox Gardens on her way to that vast, desolate King's Road which
stretches its length out into regions unknown to those whose London
is the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke, who had been paying
a call in his best, and a pair of white spats which would have cut his
friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting. Freddie,
keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was scarlet and
incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to talk with one
so intimately connected in her mind with all that she had lost, was
scarcely more collected. They parted without regre