ination concentrate. Reasons and
causes began to float nebulously before her mind. She began to ask
questions. Gone was the placid acceptance of facts. Gone was the stolid
life of babyhood. Darkness no longer terrified her because it was not
light, but because it was populated with inhabitants both dismal and
ill-minded. At first these shapes were undefined, mere cloudy
visualizations of Ruby's vague threats. Bogymen existed in cupboards and
other places of secluded darkness, but without any appearance capable of
making a pictorial impression. It was a Punch and Judy show that first
endowed the night with visible and malicious shadows.

The sound of the drum boomed from the far end of Hagworth Street. The
continual reiteration of the pipes' short phrase of melody summoned boys
and girls from every area. The miniature theater stood up tall in a
mystery of curtains. Row after row of children was formed, row upon row
waited patiently till the showman left off his two instruments and gave
the word to begin. Down below, ineffably magical, sounded the squeaking
voice of Punch. Up he came, swinging his little legs across the sill; up
he came in a glory of red and yellow, and a jingle of bells. Jenny gazed
spell-bound from her place in the very front row. She laughed gayly at
this world of long noses and squeaking merriment, of awkward, yet
incredibly agile movement. She turned round to see how the bigger
children behind enjoyed it all, and fidgeted from one foot to the other
in an ecstasy of appreciation. She laughed when Punch hit Judy; she
laughed louder still when he threw the baby into the street. She
gloried in his discomfiture of the melancholy showman with squeaky wit.
He was a wonderful fellow, this Punch; always victorious with stick and
tongue. His defeat of the beadle was magnificent; his treatment of Jim
Crow a triumph of strategy. To be sure, he was no match for Joey, the
clown. But lived there the mortal who could have contended successfully
with such a jovial and active and indefatigable assailant?

Jenny was beginning to see the world with new eyes. The kitchen of
Number Seventeen became a dull place; the street meant more to her than
ever now, with the possibility of meeting in reality this enchanted
company, to whom obedience, repression, good-behavior were just so many
jokes to be laughed out of existence. How much superior to Jenny's house
was Punch's house. How delicious it would be to bury dogs in coffins