"I agree" said Daphne. "But you can't start this morning, because you're coning with Jill and me to choose the rug." She turned to me. "Boy dear, ring up and take those tickets, will you?"
The spirit of reckless generosity which is so prominent a characteristic of "Exchange" was very noticeable this morning. The number I asked for, which was faithfully repeated by the operator, was Mayfair 976. I was connected successively to Hammersmith 24, Museum 113, and Mayfair 5800. After a decent interval I began again.
"Kennington Road Police Station," said a voice.
"Kennington Road. There ain't no Kennington."
"Ain't--I mean, aren't there? I always thought.... Never mind. How are the police?"
"I say this is Kennington Road Police Station," replied the voice with some heat.
"I know you did. I heard you. Just now. If you remember, I asked you if it was Kennington or Kennington Road, and you said----"
To avoid any unpleasantness I replaced my receiver.
Two minutes later, after an agreeable conversation with "Supervisor," I arranged to purchase five tickets for the Gold and Silver Ball.
"This," said the salesman, spreading a rug upon the top of a fast-growing pile, "is a Shiraz."
"I suppose," said Berry, "you haven't got a Badgerabahd?"
"They are rare," was the airy reply. "The best ones used to be made in Germany and sent to Egypt. By the tune the camels had finished with them, they'd fetch anything from a millionaire to a foxhound."
This was too much for Jill's gravity, and it was only with an effort that Daphne controlled her voice.
"I think that's very nice," she said shakily. "Don't you?" she added, turning to me.
"Beautiful piece of work," I agreed. "Some of it appears to have been done after dinner, but otherwise...."
"The pattern is invariably a little irregular, sir."
"Yes," said Berry. "That's what makes them so valuable. Their lives are reflected in their rugs. Every mat is a human document." With the ferrule of his umbrella he indicated a soft blue line that was straying casually from the course which its fellows had taken. "That, for instance, is where Ethel the Unready demanded a latchkey at the mature age of sixty-two. And here we see Uncle Sennacherib fined two measures of oil for being speechless before mid-day. I don't think we'd better give her this one," he added. "She-bat the Satyr seems to have got going about the middle, and from what I remember----"