The party was seated in the drawing-room, that the grown-up daughters
had made very fine during their periods of courtship. Its walls were
hung with fine grey canvas, it had a large, silvery grey, silky
carpet, and the furniture was covered with dark green silky material.
Into this reticence pieces of futurism, Omega cushions and Van-Gogh-
like pictures exploded their colours. Such _chic_ would certainly not
have been looked for up Shottle Lane.

The old man sat in his high grey arm-chair very near an enormous coal
fire. In this house there was no coal-rationing. The finest coal was
arranged to obtain a gigantic glow such as a coal-owner may well
enjoy, a great, intense mass of pure red fire. At this fire Alfred
Bricknell toasted his tan, lambs-wool-lined slippers.

He was a large man, wearing a loose grey suit, and sprawling in the
large grey arm-chair. The soft lamp-light fell on his clean, bald,
Michael-Angelo head, across which a few pure hairs glittered. His
chin was sunk on his breast, so that his sparse but strong-haired
white beard, in which every strand stood distinct, like spun glass
lithe and elastic, curved now upwards and inwards, in a curious curve
returning upon him. He seemed to be sunk in stern, prophet-like
meditation. As a matter of fact, he was asleep after a heavy meal.

Across, seated on a pouffe on the other side of the fire, was a cameo-
like girl with neat black hair done tight and bright in the French
mode. She had strangely-drawn eyebrows, and her colour was brilliant.
She was hot, leaning back behind the shaft of old marble of the
mantel-piece, to escape the fire. She wore a simple dress of apple-
green satin, with full sleeves and ample skirt and a tiny bodice of
green cloth. This was Josephine Ford, the girl Jim was engaged to.