for the afternoon service.  The streets were almost empty, and the people who went along had a preoccupied look; they did not saunter but walked with some definite goal in view, and hardly anyone was alone.  To Philip they all seemed happy.  He felt himself more solitary than he had ever done in his life.  His intention had been to kill the day somehow in the streets and then dine at a restaurant, but he could not face again the sight of cheerful people, talking, laughing, and making merry; so he went back to Waterloo, and on his way through the Westminster Bridge Road bought some ham and a couple of mince pies and went back to Barnes.  He ate his food in his lonely little room and spent the evening with a book.  His depression was almost intolerable.

When he was back at the office it made him very sore to listen to Watson’s account of the short holiday.  They had had some jolly girls staying with them, and after dinner they had cleared out the drawing-room and had a dance.

“I didn’t get to bed till three and I don’t know how I got there then.  By George, I was squiffy.”

At last Philip asked desperately: 

“How does one get to know people in London?”

Watson looked at him with surprise and with a slightly contemptuous amusement.

“Oh, I don’t know, one just knows them.  If you go to dances you soon get to know as many people as you can do with.”

Philip hated Watson, and yet he would have given anything to change places with him.  The old feeling that he had had at school came back to him, and he tried to throw himself into the other’s skin, imagining what life would be if he were Watson.

XXXVIII

At the end of the year there was a great deal to do.  Philip went to various places with a clerk named Thompson and spent the day monotonously calling out items of expenditure, which the other checked; and sometimes he was given long pages of figures to add up.  He had never had a head for figures, and he could only do this slowly.  Thompson grew irritated at his mistakes.  His fellow-clerk was a long, lean man of forty, sallow, with black hair and a ragged moustache; he had hollow cheeks and deep lines on each side of his nose.  He took a dislike to Philip because he was an articled clerk.  Because he could put down three hundred guineas and keep himself for five years Philip had the chance of a career; while he, with his experience and ability, had no possibility of ever being more than a clerk at thirty-five shillings a week.  He was a cross-grained man, oppressed by a large family, and he resented the superciliousness which he fancied he saw in Philip.  He sneered at Philip because he was better educated than himself, and he mocked at Philip’s pronunciation; he could not forgive him because he spoke without a cockney accent, and when he talked to him sarcastically exaggerated his aitches.  At first his manner was merely gruff and repellent, but as he discovered that Philip had no gift for accountancy he took pleasure in humiliating him; his attacks were gross and silly, but they wounded Philip, and in self-defence he assumed an attitude of superiority which he did not feel.