n a bottle at an uncurtained
window, to be a very mean little house. "The Square's through here," she
said. "Come away in and I'll find you a membership form for the Men's
League...."

Beyond the archway lay the queerest place. It was a little box-like
square, hardly forty paces across, on three sides of which small squat
houses sat closely with a quarrelling air, as if each had to broaden its
shoulders and press out its elbows for fear of being squeezed out by its
neighbours and knocked backwards into the mews. They sent out in front
of them the slimmest slices of garden which left room for nothing but a
paved walk from the entry and a fenced bed in the middle, where a
lamp-post stood among some leggy laurels, which the rain was shaking as
a terrier shakes a rat. Huddled houses and winking lamp and agued
bushes, all seemed alive and second cousins to the goblins. On the
fourth side were railings that evidently gave upon some sort of public
park, for beyond them very tall trees which had not been stunted by
garden soil sent up interminable stains on the white darkness, and
beneath their drippings paced a policeman, a black figure walking with
that appearance of moping stoicism that policemen wear at night. He,
too, participated in the fantasy of the place, for it seemed possible
that he had never arrested anybody and never would; that his sole
business was to keep away bad dreams from the little people who were
sleeping in these little houses. They were probably poor little people,
for poverty keeps early hours, and in all the square there was but one
lighted window. And that he perceived, as he got his bearings, was in
the house to which Ellen was leading him down the narrowest garden he
had ever seen, a mere cheese straw of grass and gravel. It was a corner
house, and of all the houses in the square it looked the most put upon,
the most relentlessly squeezed by its neighbours; yet Ellen opened the
door and invited him in with something of an air.

"It's very late," he objected, but she had cried into the darkness,
"Mother, I've brought a visitor!" and an inner door opened and let out
light, and a voice that was as if dusk had fallen on Ellen's voice said,
"What's that you say, Ellen?"

"I've brought a visitor, mother," she repeated. "Go on in; I'll not be a
minute finding the form.... Mother, this is Mr. Yaverland, the client
from Rio. He says he'll join the Men's League and I'm just going to find
him a membership