lved to keep him
in mind. He was a neighbour worth having. Angel even suggested certain
time-honoured ditties of boyhood, which, shouted in chorus, would be almost
certain to have a disastrous effect on a female addicted to migraine.

A deputation, consisting of The Seraph, then waited on Mrs. Handsomebody,
to explain that our neighbour, Mr. Pegg, having been charmed by our
singing, had presented us each with a sixpence, with the earnest injunction
that the coin be expended on currant buns at the grocer's. The Seraph came
back triumphant with the necessary consent.

"We can go," he said, "but we're not to take a bite till we're back home.
It's suppwising she'd let us do it."

"Not a bit," said Angel cynically, "she knows they'll spoil our appetite
for tea."

The grocer was a fierce, red-bearded man who kept his wife in a little
wooden stall, where she took in the constant flow of wealth extorted from
his customers.

We had told The Seraph that she was thus confined by her gloomy spouse, in
order that she might be fattened for slaughter, and his eyes were large
with pity as he stood on tiptoe to hand our three sixpences through the
little wicket. The grocer's wife leaned forward to look at him, her plump
underlip, after two futile attempts to form a chin, subsiding into a large
white neck.

The Seraph's look of pity deepened to horror. "You must be almost weady,"
he gasped.

"Ready? Ready for what, my little love?"

"Stickin'--oo, will it hurt vewy much?"

"Bless the child. What _does_ he mean?"

"He's not very well," I explained. "I think he's delirious."

"That's why we brought him here to get a cool drink," added Angel,
hurriedly, and between us we led the recreant to the little table in the
rear of the shop where the grocer had set out three glasses of ginger beer
and a plate of mixed cakes. Five minutes of unalloyed bliss followed and we
were just draining off the last dregs and cleaning up the crumbs, when a
bullet-headed boy stuck his head in at the door.

"Dorg's 'ere again," he said, laconically. "Nosin' abaht in the gabbage
'eap."

"Tie a can on 'is tile," said the grocer.

The boy disappeared, and the three of us pushed back our chairs and
followed in his wake, scenting adventure in the littered yard behind the
shop with its strange odours of bygone fruit and greens.

The dog, a small, black, Scottish terrier, was dragging an end of Boulogna
sausage from the garbage heap. The bullet-headed b