which Mr. Orgreave and Lucas were
utterly insensible.

"Oh no!" George haltingly murmured.

"Well, this is all very well, this is----!" Mr. Enwright ruthlessly
proceeded, beginning to marshal the instruments on his desk.

He had been a somewhat spectacular martyr for some time past. A
mysterious facial neuralgia had harried his nights and days. For the
greater part of a week he had dozed in an arm-chair in the office under
the spell of eight tabloids of aspirin per diem. Then a specialist had
decided that seven of his side teeth, already studded with gold, must
leave him. Those teeth were not like any other person's teeth, and in
Mr. Enwright's mind the extracting of them had become a major operation,
as, for example, the taking off of a limb. He had spent three days in a
nursing home in Welbeck Street. His life was now saved, and he was a
convalescent, and passed several hours daily in giving to friends
tragi-farcical accounts of existence in a nursing home. Mr. Enwright's
career was one unending romance.

"I was just looking at that town hall affair," said John Orgreave.

"What town hall?" his partner snapped.

"_The_ town hall," answered the imperturbable John. "George here has got
an idea."

"I suppose you know Sir Hugh Corver, Bart., is to be the assessor," said
Mr. Enwright in a devastating tone.

Sir Hugh Corver, formerly a mere knight, had received a baronetcy, to
Mr. Enwright's deep disgust. Mr. Enwright had remarked that any
decent-minded man who had been a husband and childless for twenty-four
years would have regarded the supplementary honour as an insult, but
that Sir Hugh was not decent-minded and, moreover, was not capable of
knowing an insult when he got one. This theory of Mr. Enwright's,
however, did not a bit lessen his disgust.

"Oh yes," John Orgreave admitted lamely.

"I for one am not going in for any more competitions with Corver as
assessor," said Mr. Enwright. "I won't do it."

Faces fell. Mr. Enwright had previously published this resolve, but it
had not been taken quite seriously. It was entirely serious. Neuralgia
and a baronetcy had given it the consistency of steel.

"It isn't as if we hadn't got plenty of work in the office," said Mr.
Enwright.

This was true. The firm was exceedingly prosperous.

Nobody else spoke.

"What _can_ you expect from a fellow like Corver?" Mr. Enwright cried,
with a special glance at George. "He's the upas-tree of decent
architecture."

G