single blunder. I do want to get rid of 'im."

"Then," said Mr. Clodd, reseating himself, "it can be done."

"Thank God for that!" was Mrs. Postwhistle's pious ejaculation.

"It is just as I thought," continued Mr. Clodd. "The old innocent--he's
Gladman's brother-in-law, by the way--has got a small annuity. I
couldn't get the actual figure, but I guess it's about sufficient to pay
for his keep and leave old Gladman, who is running him, a very decent
profit. They don't want to send him to an asylum. They can't say he's a
pauper, and to put him into a private establishment would swallow up,
most likely, the whole of his income. On the other hand, they don't want
the bother of looking after him themselves. I talked pretty straight to
the old man--let him see I understood the business; and--well, to cut a
long story short, I'm willing to take on the job, provided you really
want to have done with it, and Gladman is willing in that case to let you
off your contract."

Mrs. Postwhistle went to the cupboard to get Mr. Clodd a drink. Another
thud upon the floor above--one suggestive of exceptional velocity--arrived
at the precise moment when Mrs. Postwhistle, the tumbler level with her
eye, was in the act of measuring.

"I call this making a disturbance," said Mrs. Postwhistle, regarding the
broken fragments.

"It's only for another night," comforted her Mr. Clodd. "I'll take him
away some time to-morrow. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should spread a
mattress underneath that perch of his before I went to bed. I should
like him handed over to me in reasonable repair."

"It will deaden the sound a bit, any'ow," agreed Mrs. Postwhistle.

"Success to temperance," drank Mr. Clodd, and rose to go.

"I take it you've fixed things up all right for yourself," said Mrs.
Postwhistle; "and nobody can blame you if you 'ave. 'Eaven bless you, is
what I say."

"We shall get on together," prophesied Mr. Clodd. "I'm fond of animals."

Early the next morning a four-wheeled cab drew up at the entrance to
Rolls Court, and in it and upon it went away Clodd and Clodd's Lunatic
(as afterwards he came to be known), together with all the belongings of
Clodd's Lunatic, the curtain-pole included; and there appeared again
behind the fanlight of the little grocer's shop the intimation: "Lodgings
for a Single Man," which caught the eye a few days later of a
weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose language Mrs. Postwhistle
found