and woke in London.

"The young men in Tweedy's, though they respect my long standing there,
make fun of me at times because I never take a holiday in the country.
Why, sir, _I dare not_. I should wander back to my old village,
and--Well, I know how it would be then. I should find it smaller and
meaner; I should search about for the flowers and nests, and listen for
the music that I knew sixty-five years ago, and remember; and they would
not be discoverable. Also every face would stare at me, for all the
faces I know are dead. Then I should think I had missed my way and come
to the wrong place; or (worse) that no such spot ever existed, and I
have been cheating myself all these years; that, in fact, I was mad all
the while, and have no stable reason for existing--I, the oldest clerk
in Tweedy's! To be sure, there would be my parents' headstones in the
churchyard. But what are they, if the churchyard itself is changed?

"As it is, with three hundred pounds per annum, and enough laid by to
keep him, if I fail, an old bachelor has no reason to grumble. But the
sight of that little chap's nosegay, and the thought of the mother who
tied it there, made my heart swell as I fancy the earth must swell when
rain is coming. His eyes filled once, and he brushed them under the
pretence of pulling his cap forward, and stole a glance round to see if
any one had noticed him. The other passengers were busy with their own
thoughts, and I pretended to stare out of the window opposite; but there
was the drop, sure enough, on his hand as he laid it on his lap again.

"He was bound for the docks, and thence for the open sea, and I, that
was bound for Tweedy's only, had to get out at the top of Cheapside.
I know the 'bus conductor,--a very honest man,--and, in getting out, I
slipped half a crown into his hand to give to the boy, with my blessing,
at his journey's end. When I picture his face, sir, I wish I had made it
five shillings, and gone without a new tie and dinner altogether."

THE HIRED BABY, By Marie Corelli

A dark, desolate December night, a night that clung to the metropolis
like a wet black shroud, a night in which the heavy, low-hanging
vapours melted every now and then into a slow, reluctant rain, cold as
icicle-drops in a rock cavern. People passed and repassed in the streets
like ghosts in a bad dream; the twinkling gas-light showed them at one
moment rising out of the fog, and then disappearing from view as thoug