ears were smitten with a voice from the realm of wraiths.

"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees," it cried on a faint and cluttering note.
"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees a raccommoder."

Over in the far corner of the park an apparition moved into my visual
range. It looked like Plooie. It moved like Plooie. It was loaded like
Plooie. It opened a mouth like Plooie's and emitted again the familiar
though diminished falsetto shriek. No doubt of it now; it _was_ Plooie.
He had come back to us who never thought to see him again, who never
wished to see him again, still unpurged of his stigma.

As he passed me, I acknowledged his greeting, somewhat stiffly, I fear,
and walked over to Schepstein's. There in the basement, amid the
familiar wreckage as of a thousand umbrellas, sat little Annie.

"Bonjour, Dominie," said she wistfully.

"Good-morning, Annie. So you are back."

"Yes, Dominie. Is there need that one wash the step at your house?"

"There is need that one explain one's self. What have you been doing
these three years?"

"I work. I work hard."

"And your husband? What has he been doing?" I asked sternly.

Annie Oombrella's soft face drooped. "Soyez gentil, Dominie," she
implored. "Be a kind, good man and ask him not. That make him so
triste--so sad."

"He doesn't look well, Annie."

"He have been ver' seeck. Now we come home he is already weller."

"But do you think it is wise for you to come back here?" I demanded,
feeling brutal as I put the question. Annie Oombrella's reply did not
make me feel any less so. She sent a quivering look around that
unspeakably messy, choked-up little hole in the wall that was home to
Plooie and her.

"We have loved each other so much here," said she.

Our Square is too poor to be enduringly uncharitable, either in deed or
thought. War's resentments died out quickly in us. No longer was Plooie
in danger of mob violence. By common consent we let him alone; he made
his rounds unmolested, but also unpatronized. But for Annie Oombrella's
prodigies of industry with pail and brush, the little couple in
Schepstein's basement would have fared ill.

Annie earned for both. In the process, happiness came back to her face.

To the fat Rosser twin accrues the credit of a pleasurable discovery
about Plooie. This was that, if you sneaked softly up behind him and
shouted: "Hey, Plooie! What was _you_ doing in the war?" his jaw would
drop and his whole rackety body begin to quiver, and he would heave h