Would you recognise your own ghost, think you?"

"It is sad to think he would not recognise me," I say.

"It might be sadder if he did," grumbles the old House.

We both remained silent for awhile; but I know of what the old House 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 the Princesses the
most beautiful in all the world, of the Princes with magic swords, still
unsatisfied, creeps closer yet, saying: "Now tell me a real story,"
adding for my comprehending: "You know: about a little girl who lived in
a big house with her father and mother, and who was sometimes naughty,
you know."

So perhaps among the many there may be some who for a moment will turn
aside from tales of haughty Heroes, ruffling it in Court and Camp, to
listen to the story of a very ordinary lad who lived with very ordinary
folk in a modern London street, and who grew up to be a very ordinary
sort of man, loving a little and grieving a little, helping a few and
harming a few, struggling and failing and hoping; and if any such there
be, let them come round me.

But let not those who come to me grow indignant as they listen, saying:
"This rascal tells us but a humdrum story, where not