'No,' said Tom. 'I told my benevolent employers last night that it was
your birthday to-day, and I asked whether I could have a holiday. What
do you think they answered?'

'You didn't ask them,' said Henry.

'They answered that I could have forty holidays. And they requested me
to wish you, on behalf of the firm, many happy returns of the day.'

'Don't rot,' said Henry.

It was a beautiful morning, sunny, calm, inspiriting, and presently Tom
began to hum. After a time Henry perceived that Tom was humming the same
phrase again and again: 'Some streets are longer than others. Some
streets are longer than others.'

'_Don't rot_, Tom,' Henry pleaded.

The truth was that Tom was intoning a sentence from Henry's prize essay
on streets. Tom had read the essay and pronounced it excellent, and till
this very moment on the pavement of Oxford Street Henry had imagined
Tom's verdict to be serious. He now knew that it was not serious.

Tom continued to chant, with pauses: 'Some streets are longer than
others.... Very few streets are straight.... But we read in the Bible of
the street which is called Straight.... Oxford Street is nearly
straight.... A street is what you go along.... It has a road and two
footpaths.'

Henry would have given his penknife not to have written that essay. The
worst of Tom was that he could make anything look silly without saying
that it was silly--a trick that Henry envied.

Tom sang further: 'In the times before the French Revolution the streets
of Paris had no pavements ... _e.g._, they were all road.... It was no
infrequent occurrence for people to be maimed for life, or even
seriously injured, against walls by passing carriages of haughty
nobles.'

'I didn't put "haughty,"' Henry cried passionately.

'Didn't you?' Tom said with innocence. 'But you put "or even seriously
injured."'

'Well?' said Henry dubiously.

'And you put "It was no infrequent occurrence." Where did you steal that
from, my bold buccaneer?'

'I didn't steal it,' Henry asserted. 'I made it up.'

'Then you will be a great writer,' Tom said. 'If I were you, I should
send a telegram to Tennyson, and tell him to look out for himself.
Here's a telegraph-office. Come on.'

And Tom actually did enter a doorway. But it proved to be the entrance
to a large and magnificent confectioner's shop. Henry followed him
timidly.

'A pound of marrons glaces,' Tom demanded.

'What are they?' Henry whispered up at Tom's ear.

'