greengrocer's stall in Fetter Lane.

Mrs. Meakin was very fat. She had a face like an apple--not an apple just picked, but one that has been lying on the straw in a loft through the winter, well-preserved, losing none of its flavour, but the skin of which is wrinkled and shrivelled with age. On a wooden chair without any back to it, she sat in the shop all day long, inhaling that healthy, cleanly smell of good mother earth which clung about the sacks of potatoes. Here it was she waited for the advent of customers. Whenever they appeared at the door, she paused for a moment, judging from their attitude the likelihood of their custom, then, slapping both hands on her knees, she would rise slowly to her feet.

She was a good woman of business, was Mrs. Meakin, with a capable way of explaining how poor the season was for whatever fruit or vegetable her customers wished to purchase. It must not be supposed that under this pretence she demanded higher prices than were being asked elsewhere. Oh--not at all! Honesty was written in her face. It was only that she succeeded in persuading her customers that under the circumstances they got their vegetables at a reasonable price and, going away quite contented, they were willing to return again.

But what in the name, even of everything that is unreasonable have the greengrocery business and the premises of Mrs. Meakin to do with the City of Beautiful Nonsense? Is it part of the Nonsense to jump from a trade in candles before the altar of St. Joseph to a trade in oranges in Fetter Lane? Yet there is no nonsense in it. In this fairy story, the two are intimately related.

This is how it happens. The house, in which Mrs. Meakin's shop was on the ground floor, was three stories high and, on the first floor above the shop itself, lived John Grey, the journalist, the writer, the driver of the pen, the at-present unexplained figure in this story who offered his gift of generosity to St. Joseph, in order that the other as-yet-unexplained figure of the lady in the heavy fur coat should gratify her desire to light the last candle and place it in the sconce--a seal upon the deed of her supplication.

So then it is we have dealings with Mrs. Meakin and her greengrocery business in Fetter Lane. This little shop, with such generous show of brilliant colours in the midst of its drab grey surroundings, is part of the atmosphere, all part of this fairy-tale romance which began on the eighteenth of March--oh, how many years ago? Before Kingsway was built, before Holywell Street bit the dust in which it had grovelled for so long.

And so, I venture, that it is well you should see this small shop of Mrs. Meakin's, with its splashes of orange and red, its daubs of crimson and yellow--see it in your mind's eye--see it when the shadows of the houses fall on it in the morning, when the sun touches it at mid-day--when the double gas jet illuminates it at night, for you will never see it in real life now. Mrs. Meakin gave up the business a year or so ago. She went to live in the country, and there she has a kitchen garden of her own; there she grows her own cabbages, her own potatoes and her own beetroot. And her face is still like an apple--an older apple to be sure--an apple that has lain in the straw in a large roomy loft, lain there all through the winter and--been forgotten, left behind.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT TO CALL A HERO

John Grey is scarcely the name for a hero; not the sort of name you would choose of your own free will if the telling of a fairy story was placed unreservedly in your hands. If every latitude were offered you, quite possibly you would select the name of Raoul or Rudolfe--some name, at least, that had a ring in it as it left the tongue. They say, however, that by any other name a rose would smell as sweet. Oh--but I cannot believe that is true--good heavens! think of the pleasure you would lose if you had to call it a turnip!

And yet I lose no pleasure, no sense of mine is jarred when I call my hero--John Grey. But if I do lose no pleasure, it is with a very good reason. It is because I have no other alternative. John Grey was a real person. He lived. He lived, too, over that identical little greengrocer's shop of Mrs. Meakin's in Fetter Lane and, though there was a private side entrance from the street, he often passed through the shop in order to smell the wholesome smell of good mother earth, to look at the rosy cheeks of the apples, to wish he was in the country, and to say just a few words to the good lady of the shop.

To the rest of the inhabitants of the house, even to Mrs. Meakin herself, he was a mystery. They never quite understood why he lived there. The woman who looked after his rooms, waking him at nine o'clock in the morning, making his cup of coffee, lingering with a duster in his sitting-room until he was dressed, then lingering over the making of his bed in the bedroom until it was eleven o'clock--the time of her departure--even she was reticent about him.

There is a reticence amongst the lower classes which is a combination of ignorance of facts and a supreme lack of imagination. This was the reticence of Mrs. Rowse. She knew nothing; she could invent nothing; so she said nothing. They plied her with questions in vain. He received a lot of letters, she said, some with crests on the envelopes. She used to look at these in wonder before she brought them into his bedroom. They might have been coronets for the awe in which she held them; but in themselves they explained nothing, merely added, in fact, to the mystery which surrounded him. Who was he? What was he? He dressed well--not always, but the clothes were there had he liked to wear them. Three times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, he donned evening dress, stuck an opera hat on his head and Mrs. Meakin would see him pass down the Lane in front of her shop. If she went to the door to watch him, which quite frequently she did, it was ten chances to one that he would stop a passing hansom, get into it, and drive away. The good lady would watch it with her eyes as it wheeled round into Holborn, and then, returning to her backless chair, exclaim:

"Well--my word--he's a puzzle, he is--there's no tellin' what he mightn't be in disguise--" by which she conveyed to herself and anyone who was there to listen, so wrapt, so entangled a sense of mystery as would need the entire skill of Scotland Yard to unravel.

Then, finally, the rooms themselves, which he occupied--their furnishing, their decoration--the last incomprehensible touch was added with them. Mrs. Meakin, Mrs. Brown, the wife of the theatre cleaner on the second floor, Mrs. Morrell, the wife of the plumber on the third floor, they had all seen them, all marvelled at the rows of brass candlesticks, the crucifixes and the brass incense burners, the real pictures on the walls--pictures, mind you, that were painted, not copied--the rows upon rows of books, the collection of old glass on the mantle-piece, the collection of old china on the piano, the carpet--real velvet pile--and the furniture all solid oak, with old brass fittings which, so Mrs. Rowse told them, he insisted upon having kept as bright as the brass candlesticks themselves. They had seen all this, and they had wondered, wondered why a gentleman who could furnish rooms in such a manner, who could put on evening dress at least three times a week--evening dress, if you please, that was not hired, but his own--who could as often drive away in a hansom, presumably