is thinking. Soon it speaks as I expected.

"You--writer of stories, why don't you write a book about him? There
is something that you know."

It is the favourite theme of the old House. I never visit it but it
suggests to me this idea.

"But he has done nothing?" I say.

"He has lived," answers the old House. "Is not that enough?"

"Aye, but only in London in these prosaic modern times," I persist.
"How of such can one make a story that shall interest the people?"

The old House waxes impatient of me.

"'The people!'" it retorts, "what are you all but children in a
dim-lit room, waiting until one by one you are called out to sleep.
And one mounts upon a stool and tells a tale to the others who have
gathered round. Who shall say what will please them, what will not."

Returning home with musing footsteps through the softly breathing
streets, I ponder the words of the old House. Is it but as some
foolish mother thinking all the world interested in her child, or may
there lie wisdom in its counsel? Then to my guidance or misguidance
comes the thought of a certain small section of the Public who often
of an evening commands of me a story; and who, when I have told her of
the dreadful giants and of the gallant youths who slay them, of the
wood-cutter's sons who rescue maidens from Ogre-guarded castles; of