to. To do nothing whatever is a
depressing thing at all times, but perhaps it is more especially so
when one is a big, healthy boy twelve years old. London as he saw it in
the Marylebone Road seemed to him a hideous place. It was murky and
shabby-looking, and full of dreary-faced people. It was not the first
time he had seen the same things, and they always made him feel that he
wished he had something to do.

Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to speak
to Lazarus. He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the fourth
floor at the back of the house.

"I am going for a walk," he announced to him. "Please tell my father
if he asks for me. He is busy, and I must not disturb him."

Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things--even shoes
sometimes. When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to answer him. He
was very obstinate and particular about certain forms of manner.
Nothing would have obliged him to remain seated when Loristan or Marco
was near him. Marco thought it was because he had been so strictly
trained as a soldier. He knew that his father had had great trouble to
make him lay aside his habit of saluting when they spoke to him.

"Perhaps," Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely, once
when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while his master
passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally
broken-down-looking lodging-house--"perhaps you can force yourself to
remember when I tell you that it is not safe--IT IS NOT SAFE! You put
us in danger!"

It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself.
Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had
struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in
penitence and terror. But, though he no longer saluted them in public,
he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had
become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the
shabby lad whose very coat was patched by the old soldier who stood "at
attention" before him.

"Yes, sir," Lazarus answered. "Where was it your wish to go?"

Marco knitted his black brows a little in trying to recall distinct
memories of the last time he had been in London.

"I have been to so many places, and have seen so many things since I
was here before, that I must begin to learn again about the streets and
buildings I do not quite remember."

"Yes, sir," said Laza