Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but the centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little lad with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy, awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.

And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: “Would he know me, could he see me, do you think?”

“How should he,” answers the old House, “you are so different to what he would expect. Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?”

“It is sad to think he would not recognise me,” I say.

“It might be sadder if he did,” grumbles the old House.

We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House is thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.

“You—writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There is something that you know.”

It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it suggests to me this idea.

“But he has done nothing?” I say.

“He has lived,” answers the old House. “Is not that enough?”

“Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times,” I persist. “How of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?”

The old House waxes impatient of me.

“'The people!'” it retorts, “what are you all but children in a dim-lit room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep. And one mounts upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have gathered round. Who shall say what will please them, what will not.”

Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing streets, I ponder the words of the old House. Is it but as some foolish mother thinking all the world interested in her child, or may there lie wisdom in its counsel? Then to my guidance or misguidance comes the thought of a certain small section of the Public who often of an evening commands of me a story;