of Clara's boy, the one in the sailor suit, from my writing-table? I was looking at it just now——"

I interrupted her (it really was one of my rushed mornings). "I've been looking at it any time these fifteen years," I observed bitterly, "watching it become every day more and more fly-blown and like nothing on earth. What entitles it to special notice at this moment?"

"Nothing—much," said Ursula; but from the tone of her voice experience taught me that sentiment was only just out of sight. "I was wondering whether to burn it——"

"Good."

"And then I thought that, as he was married the other day and is quite likely to have a boy of his own, it would be interesting to compare this early portrait."

"It would," I assented grimly. Perhaps disappointment had made me brutal. "There's almost nothing, from the Alps at midnight to Royalty down a coalmine, with which it would not be equally safe and appropriate to compare it. Only, as I gather that this involves its continued existence for a further indefinite period, my one request is that in the meantime you remove it. Shut it in the safe. Bury it. But don't leave it about."

"Aren't you being rather excited about nothing?"

"No. This is a matter of principle, and I am speaking for your own good. Fifteen years ago that photograph, unframed and in the first flush of youth, was casually deposited on your writing-table. Perhaps you only meant to put it out of your hand for a moment while you attended to something else. But you know what the result has been. It has remained there, gradually establishing a prescriptive right. No doubt it has been dusted, with the rest of the room, seven times a week...."

"Six times," said Ursula, smiling, but blushing a little too—I was glad to observe that.

"... and as often been replaced. Its charm for the observant visitor has, to put the thing mildly, long since vanished. I doubt if either of us would so much as see it had it not attained for me the fascination of an eye-sore. Yet it stays on, simply because no one has the initiative to take action. To put it concisely, it is a squatter."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I was never more serious in my life. This speckled travesty, this photographic mummy, is but one example out of many. I do not know whether other homes resemble ours in the same tendency towards the mausoleum. But I strongly suspect it."

"What things are there besides this?" broke out Ursula, suddenly defensive. "Tell me a list of them."

"You forget, sweetheart, that as a professional literary man my time, especially in the morning, has a certain commercial value, but I will endeavour to do as you ask. You would of course justly repudiate any comparison between your own artistic setting and those Victorian houses wherein the 'drawing-room book' reposed always in the same sacred corner. Yet in the matter of derelict articles we are millionaires, we are beset by squatters."

I could see that Ursula was impressed, though she tried to conceal the fact. "Professional literary men seem to be strangely under the dominion of one word," she began coldly.

At that moment a bell tinkled.

"Eliza!" cried Ursula; "and I'm not dressed." As she fluttered from the room I had a distinct impression that she was not sorry for an excuse to break off the interview.

I re-settled myself at my desk, smiling a little cynically. How long would the lesson last? Then I happened to glance towards the mantelpiece, beside which Ursula had been standing. There, hastily propped against the clock, was that detestable photograph. It still quivered in the movement of release, as though shaking its shoulders, settling down palpably for another decade. With an uncontrollable impulse I leapt up, seized the abomination and, flinging it on the floor, ground it to powder with my heel.

In one word, the anti-squatting campaign had definitely begun.

A. E.