hins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there,
it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. It
might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van,--nothing more probable. Or at
any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that
second passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of
Sugar and Spice. You never could tell.

"Well, Mike," said Esther, one evening, as he came in, hopping in a
pitifully wounded way, and explaining that he had been one of the three
ravens sitting on a bough which the cruel huntsman had shot through the
wing, etc., "have you found your million pounds to-day?"

"No, not my million pounds," said Mike. "I'm told I shall find them
to-morrow."

"Who told you?"

"The Weenty."

"You silly old thing! Give me a kiss. Are you a dear? Tell me, aren't
you a dear?"

"No-p! I'm only a poor little houseless, roofless, windowless,
chimney-less, Esther-less, brainless,
out-in-the-wind-and-the-snow-and-the-rain, Mike!"

"You're the biggest dear in the world!"

"No, I'm not. I'm the littlest!"

"Suppose you found your million pounds, Mike?"

"Suppose! Didn't I tell you I'm sure of it to-morrow?"

"Well, when you find it to-morrow, what will you do with it?"

"I'll buy the moon."

"The moon?"

"Yes; as a present for Henry."

"Wouldn't it be rather dear?"

"Not at all. Twenty thousand would buy it any time this last hundred
years. But the worst of it is, no one wants it but the poets, and they
cannot afford it. Yet if only a poet could get hold of it, why what a
literary property it would be!"

"You silly old thing!"

"No! but you don't seem to realise that I'm quite serious. Think of the
money there would be for any poet who had acquired the exclusive
literary rights in the moon! Within a week I'd have it placarded all
over, 'Literary trespassers will be prosecuted!' And then I've no doubt
Henry would lend me the Man in the Moon for my Christmas pantomimes."

"After all, it's not a bad idea," said Esther.

"Of course it's not," said Mike; "but be careful not to mention it to
Henry just yet. I shouldn't like to disappoint him--for, of course,
before we took any final steps in the purchase, we'd have to make sure
that it wasn't, as some people think, made of green cheese."

"But never mind about the moon. Tell us how you got on with The
Sothern."

The Sothern was an amateur dramatic club in Tyre which took itself very
seriously