Chapter 1

Angelo Armstrong was a man of thirty. He had no capital, but by dint of honest and meritorious toil he found himself eventually earning a moderate salary as clerk in a London Insurance Office. He had been rejected for the Army on account of a defective knee-cap. Outside his work his tastes lay in the direction of botany and bibliomancy, which latter, according to the dictionary, is "Divination performed by selecting passages of Scripture at hazard." He also indulged in good works and was President of the Society for the Preservation of the Spiritual Welfare of the Deputy Harbour Masters at our English Seaports. Thus he was worthy of the name of Angelo by which his mother had insisted that he should be christened, after seeing a picture of the famous historical incident of "_Non Angli sed Angeli_."

Strangely enough he had never yet come under the influence of love. The three diversions given above had filled his spare hours, and woman was to him a sealed book. One morning he found a letter on his breakfast-table from an old family friend; it read as follows:--

"_Ton Répos," Woking_, _December 11th, 1916_.

"DEAR MR. ARMSTRONG,--Do tear yourself away from grimy London and come and spend the Christmas holidays with us. Only a small party and one of War-workers. We are all workers nowadays, aren't we? You _must_ come!

Sincerely yours, AUGUSTA POGSON-DELABERE.

N.B.--Our house is a long way from the Crematorium!

This settled it; he decided to go.