what she could remember of the ideal she had set up in her own mind.

In the flesh, Lieutenant Charles—no one had ever heard his surname—had been a very short, puffy man, with a completely bald head. His language was interlarded with expletives, suitable, perhaps, to intercourse with rough sailors in a gale, but devastating on shore in the company of ladies. Personally, I am not at all certain he had ever actually proposed to Miss Barbara. I don't believe he knew how.

The two ladies were living near the Docks at the time, with their father, who was something in linseed; and I have no doubt Lieutenant Charles found the old man's Port-wine agreeable and liked to bask in Miss Barbara's pretty smiles. For Miss Barbara was very pretty indeed; a bonny, plump little thing, by nature all mirth and laughter. She did not so much walk as hop like a little bird. She was altogether like a bird. Her father had always called her his dicky-bird. She kissed just as a bird pecks, and when she spoke or laughed, it was exactly like the twitter of birds settling down to sleep at sunset.

Whether she had ever really been in love with the lieutenant is another question I must leave unanswered. It is only barely conceivable. To be sure, girls do fall in love with the most improbable men: even short and puffy ones; and perhaps the lieutenant's strange oaths bewitched her in some inexplicable way. The only evidence of practical romance I can bring forward, is that the lieutenant did undoubtedly present Miss Barbara on one of his home-comings from distant parts with a grey parrot with a red tail. To be sure, he may have found the bird an intolerable nuisance; but this is an ill-natured suggestion. Whether this gift was intended as a hint, whether the parrot was meant as a dove and harbinger of a coming proposal, or whether it was an economical return for much liquid refreshment, the world will never know, for the same night the lieutenant's inglorious career came to an equally inglorious end.

This combination of what might, with a little violence, be construed as a lover's gift with the tragic loss of the lover, was the turning-point in Miss Barbara's life. Henceforth she convinced herself that she had been engaged to marry Charles, and she vowed herself to perpetual spinsterhood and the care of the parrot.

The care of the parrot was no such easy matter. The bird had made a long journey in the lieutenant's cabin, and had acquired all the lieutenant's most picturesque expressions. He was not, therefore, a bird you could admit into general society with any feeling of comfort, for although he was generally sulky in the presence of strangers, he would occasionally, and when you least expected them, rap out a string of uncomplimentary references to their personal appearance, and consign them, body and soul, to unmentionable localities, with a clearness of utterance which left no doubt as to his meaning.

When Papa Pennymint died, it was found that linseed had not been a commodity for which the demand had been sufficient to build up anything approaching a fortune. As a matter of fact, the old man had died just in time to avoid bankruptcy, and the two ladies had been obliged to sell their pretty home and to take refuge in Pomander Walk, out of reach of the genteel friends who had known them in the days of their prosperity. Of course the bird had come with them; but he had not left his language behind, and Barbara was forced to keep him shut up in the little back parlour, out of earshot. There she spent at least one hour with him every day, listening, as she told the sympathising Walk, to her dead lover's voice; and it was this constant companionship with the loquacious bird which had fostered and developed in her mind the legend of her unhappy love.

SHE SPENT AT LEAST ONE HOUR WITH HIM EVERY DAY, LISTENING, AS SHE TOLD THE SYMPATHISING WALK, TO HER DEAD LOVER'S VOICE

As a detail, I may as well add here that Barbara had christened the parrot Doctor Johnson, in honour of the mighty lexicographer, about whom she knew nothing except that an engraved portrait of him used to hang in what her father called his study, and that when she asked him who the original was and what he had done, he said, "Oh, I don't know. Seems he talked a lot." The parrot talked a lot, and so he was called Doctor Johnson. I should very much have liked to hear the observations the Giant of Fleet Street would have made, had he lived long enough to be aware of the compliment.

How the Misses Pennymint made both ends meet was a never-ending subject of discussion between Mrs. Poskett and Mrs. Brooke-Hoskyn. They regretfully came to the conclusion that the two ladies positively worked for their living. This was a serious aspersion on the Walk—but there was a worse one.

A little while ago a young man—well, a youngish man—with one shoulder a little higher than the other, had come to live with the Pennymints. At first they let it be understood that he was a distant cousin come on a visit; but when weeks passed and then months, he could no longer be described as a visitor, and the Walk had to face the fact that not only did the Misses Pennymint work for their living, but that they also kept a lodger. At first the Walk was consoled with the idea that at any rate he looked like a gentleman, and might possibly be one. But lately it had been discovered that he was a mere common fiddler, and played every evening in the orchestra at Vauxhall Gardens. Yet, in spite of his ungentlemanly profession, the man did, undoubtedly, behave like a gentleman. Moreover, it was very difficult to tax the Misses Pennymint with their ungenteel goings-on; because there was not an inhabitant of the Walk who had not experienced some kindness at their hands.

I hope I have conveyed the impression of a quiet and contented little community. I am sorry to have to add that there was one fly in the amber of their content. In the early spring of 1805 a mysterious figure had suddenly appeared in the Walk. A fisherman. A gaunt creature in an indescribable slouch hat: the sort of hat you do not pick up when you see it lying in the road; his bony form was encased in a long, nondescript linen garment, something like a carter's smock-frock. This had once been white, but was now of every shade of brown. It had enormous pockets, bulging with unthinkable contents. One morning the Walk had awakened to find him sitting at the corner where Pomander Creek empties into the Thames; sitting on an old box, with a dreadful tin vessel full of worms at his side; sitting fishing. The Walk rubbed its eyes and wondered what the Admiral would say. When the Admiral came out of his house he stopped aghast. Then he gathered himself together for a mighty effort. But it came to nothing: you cannot argue with a man who refuses to argue back. The fisherman met Sir Peter's first onslaught with a curt "Public thoroughfare," and then definitely closed his lips. Sir Peter raked him fore and aft, but never got another syllable out of him. Ultimately he retired baffled and beaten. Henceforward the fisherman came to his pitch every day, except Sunday. The Walk grew accustomed, if not