gh for all that. This report was materially softened for
the child's family. Better not say too much to the parents at present,
either way!

CHAPTER IV

HOW UNCLE MO AND HIS FRIEND COULD NOT GET MUCH ENCOURAGEMENT.
DOLLY'S ATTITUDE. ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE, AND DOLLY'S PUDDING.
HOW UNCLE MO'S SPIRITS WENT DOWN INTO HIS BOOTS. HOW PETER JACKSON
THE FIREMAN INTERVIEWED MICHAEL RAGSTROAR, UPSIDE DOWN, AND BROUGHT
AUNT M'RIAR'S HEART INTO HER MOUTH. HOW DAVE CAME HOME IN A CAB,
AND MICHAEL RAGSTROAR GOT A RIDE FOR NOTHING. OF SISTER NORA, WHO
GOT ON THE COURT'S VISITING LIST BEFORE IT CAME OUT THAT SHE WAS
MIXED UP WITH ARISTOCRATS

The present writer, half a century since--he was then neither _we_ nor a
writer--trod upon a tiny sapling in the garden of the house then
occupied by his kith and kin. It was broken off an inch from the ground,
and he distinctly remembers living a disgraced life thereafter because
of the beautiful tree that sapling might have become but for his
inconsiderate awkwardness. If the censorious spirit that he aroused
could have foreseen the tree that was to grow from the forgotten
residuum of the accident, the root that it left in the ground, it would
not perhaps have passed such a sweeping judgment. Any chance wayfarer in
St. John's Wood may see that tree now--from the end of the street, for
that matter.

So perhaps the old prizefighter might have mustered more hope in
response to Aunt M'riar's plucky rally against despair. The tiny, white,
motionless figure on the bed in the accident ward, that had uttered no
sound since he saw it on first arriving at the Hospital, might have been
destined to become that of a young engineer on a Dreadnought, or an
unfledged dragoon, for any authenticated standard of Impossibility.

The House-Surgeon and his Senior, one of the heads of the
Institution,--interviewed by Uncle Moses and Aunt M'riar when they came
late by special permission and appointment, hoping to hear the child's
voice once more, and found him still insensible and white--testified
that the action of the heart was good. The little man had no intention
of dying if he could live. But both his medical attendants knew that the
tremulous inquiry whether there was any hope of a recovery--within a
reasonable time understood, of course--was really a petition for a
favourable verdict at any cost. And they could not give one, for all
they would have been g