came to
the last Good-bye, he says with a wistful look, "You wouldn't have me not
really sorry would you Gran?" and when I says "No dear, Lord forbid!" he
says "I am glad of that!" and ran in out of sight.

But now that the child was gone out of the Lodgings the Major fell into a
regularly moping state. It was taken notice of by all the Lodgers that
the Major moped. He hadn't even the same air of being rather tall than
he used to have, and if he varnished his boots with a single gleam of
interest it was as much as he did.

One evening the Major came into my little room to take a cup of tea and a
morsel of buttered toast and to read Jemmy's newest letter which had
arrived that afternoon (by the very same postman more than middle-aged
upon the Beat now), and the letter raising him up a little I says to the
Major:

"Major you mustn't get into a moping way."

The Major shook his head. "Jemmy Jackman Madam," he says with a deep
sigh, "is an older file than I thought him."

"Moping is not the way to grow younger Major."

"My dear Madam," says the Major, "is there _any_ way of growing younger?"

Feeling that the Major was getting rather the best of that point I made a
diversion to another.

"Thirteen years! Thir-teen years! Many Lodgers have come and gone, in
the thirteen years that you have lived in the parlours Major."

"Hah!" says the Major warming. "Many Madam, many."

"And I should say you have been familiar with them all?"

"As a rule (with its exceptions like all rules) my dear Madam" says the
Major, "they have honoured me with their acquaintance, and not
unfrequently with their confidence."

Watching the Major as he drooped his white head and stroked his black
mustachios and moped again, a thought which I think must have been going
about looking for an owner somewhere dropped into my old noddle if you
will excuse the expression.

"The walls of my Lodgings" I says in a casual way--for my dear it is of
no use going straight at a man who mopes--"might have something to tell
if they could tell it."

The Major neither moved nor said anything but I saw he was attending with
his shoulders my dear--attending with his shoulders to what I said. In
fact I saw that his shoulders were struck by it.

"The dear boy was always fond of story-books" I went on, like as if I was
talking to myself. "I am sure this house--his own home--might write a
story or two for his reading one day or another."

The Major's s