immediately ready with such a pointed and personal reply about "a
couple of long ears" that he retreated hastily and felt himself to be
worsted.

So the Truslow ghost vanished from Wavebury, and very soon from most
people's memories also, but Biddy had not forgotten it when she was
quite an old woman.

STORY THREE, CHAPTER 1.

AFTER ALL!--ALBERT STREET.

"The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and
blesses, which he is loved and blessed by."--_Carlyle_.

Albert Street is in a respectable neighbourhood on the outskirts of
London--not quite in London, and certainly not in the country, though
only a little while ago there were fields and lanes where rows of houses
now stand. There are, indeed, bits of hedgerow still left where the
hawthorn tries to blossom in the spring, and dingy patches and corners
of field where flowers used to grow; but these have nearly all
disappeared, and instead of them heaps of rubbish, old kettles, empty
sardine-boxes, and broken crockery are scattered about. Only the
dandelions are lowly enough to live contentedly amongst such vulgar
surroundings, and still show their beaming yellow faces wherever they
have a chance. It was difficult in Albert Street to feel that spring
and summer meant anything else than heat and dust and discomfort. It
was more bearable in the winter, Iris Graham thought; but when the warm
bright weather came it was strange to remember that somewhere it was
pleasant and beautiful--that there were flowers blooming, and birds
singing from morning till night, and broad green fields and deep woods
full of cool shadows. Iris dreamt of it all at night sometimes, and
when she waked there was the cry of the milkman instead of the birds'
songs, and the cup of withered dandelions she had picked yesterday
instead of banks of primroses and meadows full of cowslips. But in the
daytime she did not dream, for she had no time; every bit of it was
quite filled up with what she had to do--her lessons, her clothes to
mend, her two little sisters to take out or amuse indoors, endless
matters to attend to for the two boys who were at a day-school and came
home in the evening, errands for mother, and other duties too numerous
to mention. From the time she got up in the morning till she went to
bed there was always something to be done, for she was the eldest, and
everyone in the house seemed to expect something from her. There were
five children and only one