Sellwood, thought Miss Clerricot, looking at the man; Sellwood once meant, she supposed, a man or a family responsible for the selling of timber, probably in small quantities. Probably, she thought, a man had once sold wood from a cart in a Midland town, wood bound into bundles, and had shouted his wares through the streets and had come to be given the title, having previously been something more simple, like Jack or Thomas. She examined Mr Sellwood’s face, glancing rapidly, fearful of being rude. It was an odd reflection, connecting the small Home Counties moustache, the bifocal lens and the bald dome with a man astride a load of bound wood upon a cart. She blinked back the laugh that came quickly to her. She glanced again at the face of a man who never now sit on a cartload of timber. The small moustache moved. The grey lips separated and met again. No teeth were seen. Mr Sellwood was speaking.

‘No, no, Miss Clerricot, what I say is true. I do believe my affairs would be a thorough, awful mess – my desk would be a bear-garden without you!’

How odd to say a bear-garden, thought Mrs Clerricot. Now, why had he said a bear-garden? Why liken a disorganized desk to that? It did not make much sense, yet she saw what was meant. She was used to him of course, that accounted for that; she understood the way his mind worked things out; quite often, in the letters she typed, she altered certain of his expressions. He never seemed to notice. Or, if he did, it was to pause and compliment himself on the neatness of his phraseology.

‘Don’t go,’ said Mr Sellwood.

She stood by the door, which she had reached while thinking it odd of him to use the word bear-garden. She looked back at Mr Sellwood, who looked at her from behind the ordered beauty of his desk, which in fact, was due less to her efforts than to the small amount of labour that Mr Sellwood daily performed. It would have taken, reflected Miss Clerricot, many a month to have turned Mr Sellwood’s desk into anything like a bear-garden.

‘Hmm,’ said Mr Sellwood. He was a man of fifty-five who had lived for twenty-three years in Sevenoaks and came to London every day by train; a journey he enjoyed because he was a rail enthusiast.