"Hanged if I can make out half what them blighters say," Mr. Edmondson continued cheerfully. "In English, I mean. One of 'em came up this morning--8.45--right in the thick. '_To-tnm-co-croad!_' he says, just like that; and if I don't give him a brief for Tott-n-m C't Road and the right change before you can say knife I've got Aspinall down on me like a cartload o'bricks. It ain't no tea-party, my job ain't, not in the thick, you take _my_ word for it! Chap tried to ring a bad two-bob on me this morning; broke in two in the clip--you've seen the clips we use, haven't you? What, you haven't? Just you notice some time!--Broke in two--like that--and him barging there with twenty people behind shouting 'Hurry up' and prodding him with their sticks and brollies. Oh, it's a pinch, I _don't_ think!" But still Miss Addams's surprise didn't come. After that waltz Mrs. Deschamps flatly refused to play again until she had had a dance, and so Miss Crebbin, the typist, played, to calls of "New ribbon, Miss C----! Mind the visible writing!" Then Mrs. Deschamps sat, first by the door, where she told M. Criqui that all Frenchmen had such dreadful reputations, and next at the open window at the back, where she asked him what "In the Spring a Young Man's Fancy" was in French, and then disappeared altogether. Aunt Geraldine, laughing, moved everywhere, with Mr. Massey following her with his hands clasped behind his back, and if she had to show her half-hoop of diamonds once she had to do so a dozen times. Then Mrs. Deschamps came back, crying over her shoulder, "If you tell, M. Criqui, I'll never speak to you again!" but M. Criqui did tell, of how Mrs. Deschamps, venturing into the greenhouse downstairs that was used as a smoking-room, had been detained almost by force until she had smoked half a cigarette. Nor was it Miss Addams's surprise even when one of the group of men who had been conspiring by the door handed an envelope to Mrs. Deschamps. "A note for you, Mrs. D.," he said, and Mrs. Deschamps turned it backwards and forwards and said she wondered who it could be from. She tore the envelope open and then fell back with a shriek, while the circle of men about her roared and slapped one another on the shoulders. A small object had leapt from the envelope with an angry buzz, and now lay still on the floor. "The Kissing Bee!" shouted elderly Mr. Rainbow, making a reckless attempt to assume the voice of a Ludgate Hill hawker. "Causes 'eaps o' fun and roars o' laughter!" Mr. Beeton, of the cycle-works, cried. "Don't go 'ome wifaht it!----" "One penny!----" "Knocks the jam-splosh and the spill of ink silly, eh, what?" "Here, let's have a look--where do you get 'em?" "_Oh_, you wretches!" pouted Mrs. Deschamps.