n
her arms and kissed her on the cheek, and without saying a word held her
round the waist.

"Well," resumed our governess, smiling, and pressing Annie's hand, "I
was going to say that the old gentleman had kept a kind of diary or
great memorandum-book, in which he had written--oh, in such a neat,
stiff, stalky kind of hand!--all kinds of things that had happened among
his friends and acquaintances for many years. He used to read it to me
sometimes; and once, when I had to stay there in the little cozy parlour
for a whole winter evening because of a downpour of rain, he asked me if
I should mind his reading to me a little story that he had written about
a very strange occurrence to an old friend of his who lived in just such
another lane, near just such another old hall in the city. He said that
he felt like Robinson Crusoe sometimes, except that his wife was there
with him in that quiet island of bricks and mortar; and, like Robinson
Crusoe, he had learned to put his narratives upon paper in quite a
remarkable way, so that if I didn't mind listening he would read me a
bit of a romance that was as true as anything I should be likely to get
out of the circulating libraries.

"I said of course that I should like it very much; and so, while his
wife sat on one side the fire knitting, and I was half lost in a great
leather easy-chair on the other side, the old gentleman took a bundle of
papers out of a drawer in the bookcase and read me the story that I am
now going to read to you; for as I was very much interested in it he was
so pleased that he made me a low bow, and handed me the paper neatly
folded and tied with a bit of red tape. He said it would be something to
remember him by when I went away from London."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.

A BABY'S HAND.

PEOPLE who know the city of London, and like to wander up and down the
streets, soon learn to leave the broad and more modern thoroughfares and
to plunge into the silence and seclusion of the queer by-ways which lie
away from the great roaring sea of traffic, like the caves and shallows
that skirt some great ocean bay.

Amongst these retired spots none are more suggestive than the old
churchyards all blurred and dim with London smoke, but yet in which a
few trees yearly put forth green leaves of little promise, and a choir
of sooty sparrows chirp around the queer old steeples or perch
impudently upon the leaden ornaments which adorn the sacred porch. I