ad been here every Thursday while she was round the
corner in Pall Mall, each watching the post-office for an apparition.
But from where they hovered neither could see the other.

I think what I did was quite clever. I dropped my letter unseen at his
feet, and sauntered back to the club. Of course, a gentleman who finds
a letter on the pavement feels bound to post it, and I presumed that he
would naturally go to the nearest office.

With my hat on I strolled to the smoking-room window, and was just in
time to see him posting my letter across the way. Then I looked for
the little nursery governess. I saw her as woe-begone as ever; then,
suddenly--oh, you poor little soul, and has it really been as bad as
that!

She was crying outright, and he was holding both her hands. It was a
disgraceful exhibition. The young painter would evidently explode if he
could not make use of his arms. She must die if she could not lay her
head upon his breast. I must admit that he rose to the occasion; he
hailed a hansom.

"William," said I gaily, "coffee, cigarette, and cherry brandy."

As I sat there watching that old play David plucked my sleeve to ask
what I was looking at so deedily; and when I told him he ran eagerly to
the window, but he reached it just too late to see the lady who was to
become his mother. What I told him of her doings, however, interested
him greatly; and he intimated rather shyly that he was acquainted with
the man who said, "Haw-haw-haw." On the other hand, he irritated me by
betraying an idiotic interest in the two children, whom he seemed to
regard as the hero and heroine of the story. What were their names? How
old were they? Had they both hoops? Were they iron hoops, or just wooden
hoops? Who gave them their hoops?

"You don't seem to understand, my boy," I said tartly, "that had I not
dropped that letter, there would never have been a little boy called
David A----." But instead of being appalled by this he asked, sparkling,
whether I meant that he would still be a bird flying about in the
Kensington Gardens.

David knows that all children in our part of London were once birds in
the Kensington Gardens; and that the reason there are bars on nursery
windows and a tall fender by the fire is because very little people
sometimes forget that they have no longer wings, and try to fly away
through the window or up the chimney.

Children in the bird stage are difficult to catch. David knows that many
peopl