ses of the
place beat harshly upon his ears, but he could find no meaning in it
all. Life spoke to him with a hundred tongues, and all the while he
was longing for silence. To the older inhabitants of the tenements he
seemed a morbid little boy, unhappily too delicate for sense to
be safely knocked into him; his fellow-children would have ignored him
completely if he had not had strange fancies that made interesting
stories and sometimes inspired games. On the whole, George was lonely
without knowing what loneliness meant.

All day long the voice of London throbbed up beyond the bars, and
George would regard the chimneys and the housetops and the section of
lively street that fell within his range with his small, keen eyes,
and wonder why the world did not forthwith crumble into silent,
peaceful dust, instead of groaning and quivering in continual unrest.
But when twilight fell and the children were tired of playing, they
would gather round him in his corner by the tank and ask him to tell
them stories. This tank was large and open and held rain water for the
use of the tenants, and originally it had been cut off from the rest
of the roof by some special railings of its own; but two of the
railings had been broken, and now the children could creep through and
sit round the tank at dusk, like Eastern villagers round the village
well.

And George would tell them stories--queer stories with twisted
faces and broken backs, that danced and capered merrily enough as a
rule, but sometimes stood quite still and made horrible grimaces. The
children liked the cheerful moral stories better, such as Arthur's
Boots.

"Once upon a time," George would begin, "there was a boy called
Arthur, who lived in a house like this, and always tied his
bootlaces with knots instead of bows. One night he stood on the
roof and wished he had wings like a sparrow, so that he could
fly away over the houses. And a great wind began, so that everybody
said there was a storm, and suddenly Arthur found he had a little
pair of wings, and he flew away with the wind over the houses. And
presently he got beyond the storm to a quiet place in the sky, and
Arthur looked up and saw all the stars tied to heaven with little
bits of string, and all the strings were tied in bows. And this
was done so that God could pull the string quite easily when He
wanted to, and let the stars fall. On fine nights you can see them
dropping. Arthur thought that the angels must h