I could not live like them--in the
Berkeley Square."

He smiled with mournful superiority and continued,--

"At least I thought so then, and have done till to-day. Prophets--so my
father believed, and so Madame--must be connected with the suburbs or
with outlying districts. They must not, indeed they cannot, be properly
prophetic within the radius. A central atmosphere would reduce them to
the level of the conjuror or the muscular suggestionist. Malkiel the
First, my father, was born himself in Peckham, and met my mother when
coming through the rye."

He brushed aside a tear that flowed at this almost rustic recollection,
and continued,--

"Yet Madame was wishful, and I was wishful too, that the children--if
we had any--should not grow up Eastern. It was a natural and a beautiful
desire, sir, was it not?"

"Oh, very," replied the Prophet, considerably confused.

"The habits and manners of the East, you see, sir, are not always in
strict accordance with propriety. Are they?"

Before the Prophet had time to realise that this question was merely
rhetorical, he began,--

"From what Professor Seligman says in his _The Inner History of
Baghdad_, I feel sure--"

"Nor are the customs of the East quite what many a clergyman would
approve of," continued Malkiel. "Yet even this was not what weighed most
with Madame."

"What was it then?" inquired the Prophet, deeply interested.

"Sir, it was the Eastern language."

"Ah!"

"Could we let our children learn to speak it? Could we bear to launch
them in life, handicapped, weighed down by such a tongue? Could we do
this?"

Again the Prophet mistook the nature of the question, and was led to
reply,--

"Certainly English children speaking only Arabic might well be at some
loss in ordinary conver--"

"We could not, sir. It was impossible. So we resolved to go to the north
of London and to avoid Whitechapel at whatever cost."

"Whitechapel!" almost cried the Prophet.

"This determination it was, sir, that eventually led our steps to the
borders of the River Mouse."

"Oh, really!"

"You know it, sir?"

"Not personally."

"But by repute, of course?"

"No doubt, no doubt," stammered the Prophet, who had in fact never
before heard of this celebrated flood.

"That poor governess, sir, last August--you recollect?"

"Ah, indeed!" murmured the Prophet, a trifle incoherently.

"And then the mad undertaker in the autumn," continued Malkiel, with
conscious pride;