re
that he was really made just like common human beings. He was a thin,
pale boy, while she looked like a baby rose full blown in a night
because her time was short; and his movements were sluggish, but if she
was not walking she must be dancing, and sometimes when there were few
people in the street, the little armful of delight that she was jumped
up and down like a ball, while Tommy kept the time, singing "Thrummy,
Thrummy, Thrum Thrum Thrummy." They must have seemed a quaint pair to
the lady as she sat at her window watching them and beckoning to Tommy
to come in.

One day he went in, but only because she had come up behind and taken
his hand before he could run. Then did Tommy quake, for he knew from
Reddy how the day after the mother-making episode, Ma-ma and she had
sought in vain for his door, and he saw that the object had been to call
down curses on his head. So that head was hanging limply now.

You think that Tommy is to be worsted at last, but don't be too sure;
you just wait and see. Ma-ma and Reddy (who was clucking rather
heartlessly) first took him into a room prettier even than the one he
had lived in long ago (but there was no bed in it), and then, because
someone they were in search of was not there, into another room without
a bed (where on earth did they sleep?) whose walls were lined with
books. Never having seen rows of books before except on sale in the
streets, Tommy at once looked about him for the barrow. The table was
strewn with sheets of paper of the size that they roll a quarter of
butter in, and it was an amazing thick table, a solid square of wood,
save for a narrow lane down the centre for the man to put his legs
in--if he had legs, which unfortunately there was reason to doubt. He
was a formidable man, whose beard licked the table while he wrote, and
he wore something like a brown blanket, with a rope tied round it at the
middle. Even more uncanny than himself were three busts on a shelf,
which Tommy took to be deaders, and he feared the blanket might blow
open and show that the man also ended at the waist. But he did not, for
presently he turned round to see who had come in (the seat of his chair
turning with him in the most startling way) and then Tommy was relieved
to notice two big feet far away at the end of him.

"This is the boy, dear," the lady said. "I had to bring him in by
force."

Tommy raised his arm instinctively to protect his face, this being the
kind of man who