Front matter (continued 2)

The Lord Mayor stepped down from his chair and lifted his glass of champagne. His voice took on new seriousness:

"My lords and gentlemen, I have not forgotten the toast I am asking you to drink. 'The Commerce of London' is a mighty fact, a tribute to our national energies and honourable name. It is potent; yet its power might be greater than ever for securing human happiness. All that is required is a little more humanity, sympathy, imagination, easy sacrifice on the part of--us! We, the masters, can do great things. Let us manage this. We shall not make our means and wealth appreciably less by securing that those dependent on us have sufficient to live on in decency and comfort; nor shall we lose anything worth the keeping if we resolutely refuse to condescend to such shoddy evils as sweating, jerry-building, wild-cat speculations, and the maintenance of the slums. Let us live well, and avoid dying leaving preposterous fortunes behind us. Let me make a public confession. I own five houses in a street in South London. They are old, ill-built, badly-drained, rack-rented. I know it well, but have never thought of the true facts about them till now. Those houses shall be destroyed; and, in their stead, buildings erected that will provide decent and comfortable homes at a fair rent for the present occupiers. I shall not lose much, if anything, through the improvement; but the happiness I shall in consequence gain will be immeasurable. There will be no skeletons in my cupboard henceforth. My lords and gentlemen, am I to go on this crusade alone? Will you join me in this effort for human good?"

Every man in the assembly, including the toast-master, rose in his place and shouted "Yes!"

"Then may I suggest that each of you takes his menu and writes on it resolutions--no pie-crust promises these, no New Year good intentions, but resolutions to be lived up to and with determination kept? If I fail in my intention, hoot me and stone me at the end of my year of office; but I will not fail! I will not fail!"

June flew, and kneeling on the top of the Lord Mayor's head--so round and smooth and shiny--kissed it delightedly. A new inspiration thereupon came to him:

"Above the resolutions write--'Let us make London fit for the fairies!' My lords and gentlemen, I give you the toast."

They drank it in bumpers.

CHAPTER VII

ARCHIDIACONAL FUNCTIONS

When the excitement which followed the Lord Mayor's speech had to some extent subsided, there was a hurried borrowing and sharpening of pencils.

The Lord Mayor wrote his resolutions with a flourish.

"I'll have that framed," he said, as he gazed with head a-slant at the inscribed menu. The Archdeacon wrote his in Latin verse. Emmanuel Oldstein--far away--began his with a gold pencil as large as a cigar; and then paused, puzzled.

"'Ow d'ye thpell fairieth--oh, and what are fairieth?"

He had a faint fear that they were something to do with the Book of Common Prayer.

The man he addressed was a Personage, the Past-Master of a City Company--which had no longer a Hall, and was blessed with a dwindling income of seventy pounds per annum.

"The fairies," he began, with a tremendous air of authority--"tales, you know--ah!--the fairies--."

Bim, who happened to be wandering along his part of the table, hearing this hesitancy on the most real and important subject under the sun and moon, raised the wand and gave him a punishing rap on the knuckles. At once the Past-Master was an informed authority. He talked like a school child who knows his lesson too well, hurriedly, glibly.

"The fairies are the mimic rulers of the world. Where beauty is, where purity is, where love is, there is Fairyland. Oberon is the king, Titania queen. The little people are the only living realities. We--you--I, these others--are shadows, only shadows!" He paused. "May I trouble you to pass that candle?" he asked, and lighted a new cigar.

Oldstein was impressed. He wrote his resolutions--there were necessarily many, as his past social defects had been numerous--with firmness and slow care, in a good commercial hand. While he did so, the music was playing, and there were brief, ecstatic, uninspired speeches, built on the lines of the Lord Mayor's. June waited for higher game.

At last the Toast-master's voice rang out for the last of their orators.

"My lords and gentlemen! Pray silence for the Venerable Archdeacon Pryde!"

The ecclesiastic slipped a final voice lozenge between his lips and calmly absorbed it, while the applause which welcomed his rising went on. The hand-clapping and table-rapping coming unexpectedly and abruptly to an end, he swallowed the last of the lozenge with a gulp.

"My lords and gentlemen, the toast which it is my privilege to propose is in an especial manner also the toast of the evening. I am going to ask you to drink with me the health of our host, the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor!"

During these words Bim had been clambering up the Archdeacon's right-arm coat-sleeve. It was a fine piece of mountaineering. He arrived safely at the summit, and squatted cross-legged on the speaker's right shoulder, proud and pleased, intending to lead the cheering with waves of the wand. June decided once more to be an influence at the board, so she fluttered up to the archidiaconal head, and reverently topped its raven tresses with the crown; then she reclined on the gentle slope of his left shoulder. Again the effect of the crown was instantaneous.

The Archdeacon, let it be confessed, had prepared a speech. It was to be full of adulation and carefully considered impromptus. There were to have been a Greek epigram, two quotations from Shakespeare, one from Stow, one from the Archdeacon's own version of the "Georgics," two old stories from Punch, and a reference--dragged in somehow--to the Oxyrhynchus papyri. The peroration, as devised, was a golden picture, with purple slabs, of the wide, wide, circling Empire, with the Lord Mayor's bounteous table as its hub. That speech was like the heroine of an old-fashioned love tale, beautiful and doomed.

The speaker gasped when the crown touched him, and cried, "Ahem!" Then the words came in a torrent, tumultuous, tumbling, liquid, verbal waters of Lodore. He clenched a fist and looked sternly at his hearers.

"This is no conventional evening. The Lord Mayor--honour to him!--has set an example of high purpose and pluck, which I shall unhesitatingly follow. Once upon a time, dear friends, I was a curate, pale and young, 'tis true, but also ambitious and hopeful. I saw the world as a vast wilderness, waiting to be redeemed from its emptiness, to be adorned again with blossoming roses. As the immortal Bard of Avon has told us--but never mind that now! I said to myself in those young days, Here am I, chosen to share in the greatest work that can be done by man. Here am I, dubbed by my fellows reverend. The task I have to do is a great one. I will do it. Gentlemen, I did not do it. For seven months I laboured as I should have done, then adulation and tea-parties made mischief of me. I forgot my early aspirations, lost my young ideals, forgot the sacred character--the responsible privilege--of my calling, and began that long process of careful courtliness which has brought me worldly appreciation, a large correspondence, many paragraphs in the papers, and a useless life. Behold in me an Archdeacon who has lost the illusions!--an Archdeacon who will find them again!"

Bim waved his wand; and, the Lord Mayor leading, the excited gathering broke into a round of applause. The Archdeacon looked about him gratified: not often did his words gain appreciation like this! The idea that he too should mount the chair the better to speak flashed through his brain. But that was not to be. Archidiaconal dignity is no light thing; even the power of June could hardly have lifted it.

The ruling fairy, reclining on his left shoulder, her head resting against his coat-collar, forgot the present in waking-dreams. In her mind-world she wandered again through glades of Fairyland, sun-lighted, flower-haunted, and shining with dew; and was singing a song to an audience of wrens and squirrels. The even flow of clerical oratory, though so near, seemed to her dream-laden senses merely the sough of the wind through charmed branches, the roll of a distant sea, the murmur of waterfalls drumming on swollen rivers--musical, soothing.

"My friends, we need the illusions: even more than dividends we need the dreams. Have not we, the practical men, lost very much through our mere matter-of-factness? We have been too careful, we have neglected the gift of vision, and the world has lost immeasurably thereby. The time has surely come when Quixote should live again. We want one brave enough and sufficiently unselfish to tilt against the windmills, possibly to destroy the ugly shadows which frighten, certainly to recreate Knight-errantry, and give Mrs. Grundy, the better-half of Mammon, her right dismissal. Ah, brethren, how much I am asking! Convention is the greatest of citadels for weak men to conquer. It were easier to put the Monument into a cigarette-case than remove the formalities, snobbery and narrownesses--due to lack of sympathy, and loss of the touch-faculty, as Ruskin calls it--which hinder man's humanity. What said Tennyson--yes, I must give you this quotation--

"'Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!'--would that he were here, to sweeten the selfish world of to-day as he sweetened the Middle Ages! And not he only. We want the saints--every one--with their selflessness and rapture, to come again. Oh, that we could once more see haloes about the heads of men. Joan of Arc, too, the lily-maid of Domremy, we want her; would that she could return, bringing the inspiration of her Voices to help us throw off the tyrants of selfishness, lust, foolish formality, and greed, which burden and endanger our beloved land!"

The Archdeacon paused--he was thoroughly enjoying his eloquence--to moisten his lips with wine. Bim touched the golden liquid with the wand, drawing the speaker's purpose fairywards.

"Joan of 'oo, did 'e say? Joan of what?" asked Emmanuel of the Past-Master.

"Hush, friend!" was all the answer he received. The Past-Master meant to say "Shut up!"; but the influence in the loving-cup compelled euphemisms.

"The Lord Mayor, in a moment of splendid inspiration--yes, splendid inspiration--bade us so live and do that London should be rendered fit for the fairies. A delightful idea! Let us live up to that bidding. But primarily shall we pause and think? What are the fairies? What but sweet invisibles, the fruits of happy imagination, through whose influence the buds open and become beautiful flowers, the birds lift their songs, and all of us are kind. Delightful fancies! Delightful fancies! Truly it were well for ourselves and our fellows if we could make this great City, this hub of Empire--may we not regard this bounteous table as the core of that hub?--this influential centre of the wide world, a joy to the dainty denizens of Fairyland? We may make it so; and, friends, we will make it so--I repeat, we will!"

Bim was quite frantic at this bold announcement. To have a real Archdeacon pronouncing benediction on Fairyland was beyond expression delightful. No suburban aristocrat paragraphed in a London paper could have rejoiced more fully. He lost himself in ecstasy, and compelled that audience to cheer for three solid minutes, till they were hoarse and began to feel foolish. The Archdeacon took advantage of the well-spread enthusiasm to eat another voice lozenge.

"The fairies will be with us in our enterprise; the angels also. Both these spiritual forces are on our side. Dear me! dear me! How wonderful it seems! Now to facts! Naturally from my office I am most concerned with the materialism about us, a materialism which finds expression in the hateful cocksure ugliness abounding in this London of ours, as well as in the devil-may-care thriftlessness, the drunkenness and vice, the mean excitements of gambling in its many forms, the squalor, the poverty, the want, which make wide areas of this unequalled Metropolis a Devil's City. Everyone here knows, as well as I do, the shame of it all; and the greater shame which hangs over us, the practical men, for the existence, persistence, continuance of this state of things. It is iniquitous, intolerable; yet it goes on. How much longer shall it continue? For years, or for weeks, or for days? That rests with us. All here, following the Lord Mayor's example, have written down resolutions, which, if they are kept, will modify this evil everywhere, and end it in parts. The more thoroughly we live up to our intentions, and redeem our voluntary pledges, the sooner the end of these iniquities will come. For mark this, gentlemen. The greed or the carelessness--more the latter than the former--of individuals has wrought the havoc. The unselfishness and scrupulous care of individuals alone can undo it. It is no good crying for Government to do the work."

"Hear, hear!"

"The Ministerial machine is a lumbering instrument. It takes the breath of gods to inspire it, to get it to move along the right way, and then is apt to break down suddenly and finally, in an amazingly human manner. The State is a sleepy inconsequent monster, which when it acts is apt to do so like a thunderstorm, with violence and but casual good results. It is individuals--you, I, the man in the street--who can do things, if we will: and now we must do them. We are pledged to it. Our words have been taken down by the Mercuries of the Press to be--within an hour or so--flashed to all parts of England, eventually to reach the farthest limits of the earth. We are bound, in honour, to keep our words!"

After that mouthful of eloquence the Archdeacon was compelled again to pause. But the audience, their due excitement heated and quickened by Bim's insistence, cried incessantly, "Go on! Go on!" while June, far away from this effort of prose statesmanship, was dreaming of Faerie.

She was back in the Violet Valley. She saw Oberon and Titania, with their most wonderful court. She heard the silver melody of countless elf-voices, she hearkened with worshipful intent to the trills and throbbings of nightingales, she knew the welcome of the flowers, the breath of a soft wind journeying over grasses; and then, through the joys of dreaming, those influences called to her--called to her pleading, to leave her wild mistaken quest in that world of dust and shadows, and return to the happiness and beauty of the old loved life.

Fairyland, in all its voices, pleaded with her earnestly; it drew her heart with its magic, and made her yearn to go back again; but--no, it should not be!

The Archdeacon went on talking. Bim was satisfied now. He lay down once more to rest.

"I will follow our host's example in telling you what I shall do. My income is a thousand a year, with a house. What do I want, even after satisfying the calls of necessary hospitality, with more than four hundred a year? I shall have to sacrifice some luxuries, true; but I shall have found a new luxury--the best of all luxuries--of knowing that through the wider use of my income, comforts--impossible before--will be enjoyed in twelve poor clergyman's homes. By giving fifty pounds annually to each of these deserving servants of the Church, I shall reduce their anxieties, insure that they and their families have a better standard of comfort, and so make these, my comrades of the cloth, better and more efficient workmen for the cause. I shall make it a condition of the gift that every one of them acts cordially with the other priests and ministers in his parish--whatever their denomination may be; because, however much we must and shall differ on points of doctrine--till the truth is found in the world invisible--we all should be soldiers under the one banner, united for the one cause, though in different regiments, to forward right, to end wrong, to raise the fallen, to fight sin, to encourage the weak, to discover and destroy those causes which, unchecked, lead to the starvation, disease and death of body, mind, and soul. For this purpose all men and women, members of the churches, and those who follow the light without belonging to any organized branch of the Church, should see in one another comrades, united for the great purpose of making the world shine with beauty, love and happiness."

Bim, tired through his past enthusiasm, had gradually sunk into slumber. He grasped the wand firmly, though he was asleep. June, on the left shoulder, was still in fairy glades. This is why the Archdeacon had become so serious, and his style and words more suited to his gaiters.

The guests still followed his speech with eagerness, and were strengthened in their new ideals and brave determinings by his bold, plain speaking. It was the strangest banquet they had ever attended, but none of them thought so; and the unconventional addresses seemed just what should have been expected.

"One more personal word in my concluding remarks. I have had many critics, who have not hesitated to say that I lived up to the meaning of my name. Perhaps I have! Perhaps they were right. But, believe me, I will study to reduce my pride. I can see now, as I never saw before, how mistaken I have been in forgetting humility. For a clergyman to be worldly is for him to be unworthy of his faith. It will be a hard battle to be rid of old habits and tendencies, the results of long custom; but I will try. I will endeavour earnestly so to act that the meanest tramp by the wayside, the poorest child, the humblest old man or old woman, may see in me one like themselves, a comrade and a helper."

He paused and remembered the peroration, laboriously prepared under the study lamp; and decided to abandon it. He ended simply.

"It is the Lord Mayor, by his happy lead and example, who has begun what I believe is to all of us a great revolution. My lords and gentlemen, I beg you to join with me in drinking his health."

They did so.

CHAPTER VIII

MAN AND SUPERMAN

The banquet ended with a buzz of tongues. The guests rose, and, standing in clusters, eagerly gave expression to their views of the evening's happenings. Emmanuel Oldstein, his nature softened by unusual fare and strange appeals, went with a rush to button-hole the Archdeacon and build a monument of promises. The ecclesiastic, greatly daring, asked him to tea--when the rapturous resolutions were fulfilled.

Such was the beginning of a revolution wrought by one Lord Mayor in league with a fairy. What could not such powers do, if they would cooperate more frequently!

Sir Titus gave a general good-night, and retired to his private apartments, to convert the Lady Mayoress to his views--no light task, as Sir Titus very well knew. June, with Bim--who as he went seized an armful of fresh spring flowers--departed, and the mortals went their ways.

The two from Fairyland stood by the Mansion House railings watching the carriages draw up and drive away, bearing their excited loads of men with purposes. Not till the last had gone, and the City resumed its wonted state of comparative peace, did June and he turn in the direction of Paradise Court.

How to get there? A solitary motor-cab waited by the pavement on the other side of the road, the chauffeur talking of tyres and race-horses to a loafer. The driver was one of the impossible brigade, who mark their superiority to ordinary folk by disdaining to accept passengers save when it exactly suited them. June saw this monarch of the road reject the prayers of five stranded wayfarers for no other reason than that his views on the coming Derby were not yet fully told.

So she acted. She took her wand and waved it. A puzzled expression flitted over the face of the man. He mounted the seat of the cab, moved the steering wheel, jerked a lever, and drove to where the fairy and gnome were waiting. The loafer and an interested policeman who had sauntered up looked amazed at this comedy of mystery.

They watched the machine stop, the driver alight and open the door with a bow of great respect to--nothing. They saw the cab at its best speed pass rapidly into Cornhill and hurry eastward. When it had glided out of sight the loafer breathed an incredulous whistle, and the policeman found words of wonder. "Well, I'm blowed!" was the inadequate all he could say.

Their astonishment was nothing to that of the driver. He was astounded. He could do nothing but continue his course, steering the car boldly along clattering streets, travelling as if guided by an overwhelming unseen influence, here and there, through tortuous strange ways, until instinctively he applied the brake and stopped beside a mean public-house at the entrance to an alley.

Hurriedly, as if fearful of keeping important patrons waiting, he sprang from his seat, reopened the door of the apparently empty cab, and again made obeisance.

Then, when the invisible passengers had alighted, he shut the door with a bang, and swore thoroughly till he found relief.

June did not enter any of the houses, but with Bim dangling at the end of the wand--his left arm still clasping the flowers--flew up to the roof, carrying him with her.

At once reaction came. The excitement and the interest of the day's proceedings had kept her going; but now, when the time for quiet had come, she passed into a state of torpor and depression. She forgot her triumphs, lost the exhilaration which success had raised in her, and knew, even more than after her first arrival, the grossness and almost hopeless ugliness which beset her. For the first time in a delightful life, she was visited with the blues.

That was an opportunity for Bim.

The long bouts of sleep had refreshed him, and he proved less sensitive than June to the effects of their environment. He took the flowers, and with rapid fingers wove a fairy-bower about her. The white and yellow cups and one purple violet, refreshed by his affection, revived in sympathy. June, noting Bim's helpfulness, took cheer and courage again. For a whole day she remained harassed and weary; but on the following evening she faced her task again.

She flew languidly to the brink of a chimney-pot and studied the world around. Black roofs, seedy houses, blank windows and glaring lights on every side: over all stretched the haze that had frightened her.

"Poor humanity!" she murmured, "doomed day and night, year after year, from birth to death, to be bricked in like that!"

She did not now waste energy in expressing apostrophe, but made immediate plans. She attended to the flowers which Bim had rescued from death.

She touched the cut ends and strengthened their power of life; then lovingly she arranged the best of them about the dusty base of the chimney-stack. They were precious possessions, treasures to hoard.

Bim had seen in a forgotten flower-box in a corner of the court mould, gathered years before from a lost garden. That would do! He went to get some, while June stood on the flat parapet and looked on the court below.

Darkness, dirt, decay! How very like life in the town! She looked above at the wounded sky. Two planets and the moon shone dimly through London smoke. The fairy yearned to be above that cloud, to swim in the azure ocean of night, to be closer to the stars, nearer the ideals, farther from muck-raking men. Up, up, and up!

She spread wings and climbed the skylark's stairway. Up and up she went, deliriously happy now, thinking the thoughts the laverock sings. For a while she absolutely forgot weariness and heartache, and only knew gladness of life and the passion to be nearer the light.

Her wings did not cease their beating till she was out of the haze, breathing again the untroubled air which is, indeed, to men and to fairies, life. Then resting on wings outspread, she hung motionless, an atom of light potential, brooding over the miles of lurid city.

Her heart became heavy and sorry because of the burdens of men. To her sight, London was a ruined wilderness, lit here and there with yellow flares. Where the parks stretched was mere blackness, interspersed with dimly shining slabs of pond and lake as the shrouded moonshine happened to fall on them. The Thames, except for occasional gleams of reflected moonlight, was a grey ribbon, a wedge driven through luridness, a forbidding fact.

The red canopy of haze which in Elfdom had oppressed her stretched underneath. It was a barrier between man and the stars--heavy and palpable. The shining worlds which lend magic to the night are so potent an influence for mind-good, bringing exaltation and the high dreams, that what hindered their contemplation was an evil to be banished and destroyed. So June argued, puzzling how to end it. Fairy cogitation! Yet is it so futile?

She was glad to change her gaze and look above her. There it spread--star dust, the firmament, myriads of worlds and suns supremely magnificent, infinite, uplifting, yet, with all the stir of the soul it occasioned, bringing strengthening humility. If men used their eyes and minds and saw more of the shine of the universe; if they watched the constellations in their annual orbits, knew the unique Sirius as a friend, recognized Arcturus, greeted the Pleiades after their summer absence, would not ideals be nobler, hopes happier, tolerance of meanness in its many shapes impossible?

While the fairy rested in her blissful aerial loneliness, she became aware of a gradual gladness, an added sense of joy--more subtle than had blessed her spirits since her flight from the Violet Valley--visiting her. It roused her from reverie to realities.

Fairies--her own people--were approaching, calling her. Their voices and brilliance were better than pearls and wealth.

"June, our June, come back to us! Come back! Come back!"

The appeal was powerful. With almost the swiftness of light the fairies flew. It was the company of knights, half a century strong, who had been commissioned to conduct June after the crowning home to the Land of Wild Roses. She turned with gladness to greet them. Like was coming to like. Sympathies were drawing together. They were her own people, her comrades; they pleaded with her to leave her crusade in the darkness, and return to delight.

Their presence was welcome, but not even then could she forget the children and those others whose plight required the gifts of the fairies. When the elf-world had helped them, she would go back gladly, but--not yet. She could not leave Sally and her mates of Paradise Court or the other dim millions whose need of beauty and joy and light she knew.

She closed her wings and sank to earth, leaving the knights above the cloud, wheeling and calling to her in vain. They looked through the veil at the world beneath and reluctantly flew back to Fairyland.

She found Bim busy, home-building. He had gathered some "smoke-dried" moss from roofs and chimneys, wondering the while at the angular world he clambered over, and had beaten it into a bed for her, with cobwebs for coverlet. He was coaxing the newly-planted flowers to feel at home, and all the while was singing, croakingly and cheerily, as if a draughty roof over Paradise Court was as near Fairyland as need be. So it was to him then, while working for June.

She did not interrupt him--his activity and happiness were balm and strength to her--but descended the chimney into the room.

Sally was fast asleep, so were the two men and the mother of the babe. The infant was weakly crying. The two other women were awake and working, toiling by the light of a candle. Their eyes were dazed and weak through its flickering uncertainties, but the effort had to be. All the protest they made was to curse and chide the wailing infant. June, heedless of the economies, touched them to sleep, and prudently put out the light.

She gave the sleepers dreams to cheer and comfort them. Sally was back once more in the land of the glorious waterfall. Bill was tramping along a dusty road with the promise of beer ahead. Then June quieted the baby by kissing its eyes, giving the hungry mite the comfort of slumber.

What was to become of that mortal, born to be blighted and doomed? There she touched our heaviest problem. The fact of life meant misery to that mite. The fairy noted with sadness its sunken eyes, pinched cheeks, and limbs no thicker than firewood, and wondered and wondered what to do. If that child was left so, neglected and starved through the innutrition that was all its mother could give it, it would die. Should that be?

She wished that some of the wasted provender from the Lord Mayor's board could be given to the children who needed food, and decided forthwith to fetch some for the many infant victims of Paradise Court.

She passed through the window, waving to it to open and shut as she went, and was away like light on her quest.

She flashed along the silent streets, rose to pass over the City, brushed with her left wing the dragon on Bow Church steeple, fluttered for a contemplative moment over the west door of St. Paul's, came to earth at the Griffin.

She watched omnibuses and cabs go by, and streams of belated people. She looked eagerly into their faces, but found none quite to her liking. So she resumed her flight along the Strand and rested on the railings before Charing Cross.

Two gilded youths came swaggering along, helping and hindering each other, their arms linked. They had white, empty faces, crush-hats were villainously aslant on their heads, their black cape coats were open, showing broad shirt-fronts with shining diamond studs.

They sometimes sang a spasm of chorus, sometimes peevishly quarrelled, sometimes were uncomplimentary to passers-by. They were adopted sons of Silenus, swollen with insolence and wine.

June descended to the junction of their linked arms, and poked each vigorously, thrice, with her wand, putting good purposes into their muzzy brains.

Their ideas became clearer. They stopped, lurched, and with a fine effort stood upright like manly men. One assumed his monocle, and said, "Jove!" They crossed the road, ignoring the rapid traffic as if it were not, and entered a confectioner's shop, which remained open nightly till the fairy hour.

Each planked down two sovereigns.

"Buns," said one.

"Milk," demanded the other.

"Chocolate."

"Cups!"

The weary waitresses thought the youths were making fun of them, but seeing the gold, and glad to be rid of their balance of scones and buns, they piled all they had before these customers, brought great tins of milk, and packets full of chocolate, with all the chipped, cracked cups they could hurriedly find and spare.

One of these unwitting philanthropists stared at the sixpence-halfpenny change which a conscientious cashier had put in his gloved hand; the other gazed through his eyeglass, startled by the quantity of their purchases. June smilingly approved their deeds and intentions.

"We'll have a growler!" they declared together.

A curious crowd of waitresses and passers-by helped them to load the vehicle, repeated their united command to go "That way"--Eastward--and sped them on their journey with a laughing cheer.

"What have we done this for?" said the one to the other.

"Lord knows," was the answer, "but we'll do it."

Lulled by the closeness of the cab, the smell of the buns, the rattle of the cups, and their innate sense of virtuous doing, the happy couple put heads together and slept, till they were wakened by the rattling and clattering of the cab passing over a granite causeway.

The Jehu came to his senses first. June, who had been standing in his chest pocket, where he illegally kept his badge, stopped him by Paradise Court.

"I dunno why I done it, but I did!" he said to a policeman, who, seeing a waiting cab, had sauntered up.

Bim came scurrying down from the roof.

"Sit on his head," June commanded him. The gnome perched on the policeman's helmet. "Make him help!"

The youths dragged at and lifted down their tins of milk. Then the cabman, policeman, and they boldly entered the court, crept into every room of every house--there are few locks in Paradise Court, and bolts are seldom shot there--and put by each sleeping child a cup of milk, a bun and a piece of chocolate--surprises for their awakening.

The good things were just enough for the number needing them, with five buns left over, which the cabman pocketed.

The human quartet eventually emerged from the court, radiant with kindness.

"I could do a drink," said the policeman, darkening his bull's-eye lantern.

"Same 'ere," said the heated charioteer.

"And so say all of us!" chimed the youths.

The policeman gave a peculiar whistle. An upper window of the public-house was quietly opened.

"'Oo goes there?" whispered Bung.

"Us, Tim," said the policeman.

"Right-oh, Alfred! 'arf a mo'."

The wearer of the monocle produced some silver.

"My turn," he said; "four whiskies."

While these givers of goodness rewarded themselves, June went to her nest for sleep.

"This is the beginning of the new Fairyland," she said gratefully to Bim, who beamed.

CHAPTER IX

THE PROGRESS OF OBERON

The Lord Mayor's Banquet became history, though in the beginning the newspapers were inclined to pay slight attention to it. If it had happened in the dog-days, when attractive "copy" for holiday idlers is at a premium, it would without any especial effort on the part of the fairies, have been seized by journalists and made the easy rage of a summer season. It would have swamped the sea-serpent, rendered the giant gooseberry an unblown bubble, prevented imaginative pessimists from indulging annual fears of the future of our daughters and the failure of our marriages; would have made the ordinary Silly Season a period of real, recreative, intellectual bliss.

But June, in her decisions, had no concern for any mere editor's convenience, and caught the powers of Fleet Street just at their busiest time. Parliament was still mouthing about the Budget, and adding to the troubles of Tadpole and Taper; a miniature General Election--three by-elections at once--was in progress; the summer worlds of sport were getting into swing; an earthquake had played havoc with the island of Zikki-baboo; the natives of the North-West Frontier of India had been once more at their sniping, inviting a new punitive expedition to be despatched; Gertie Feathergirl of the Gaiety had become romantically engaged to the Hon. Stanley Stallboys, and was making her last appearances--to the delight of a gushing multitude--before she retired to private life and the management of a motor business; the Very Grand Duke of Hotzenbosch had written a postcard, marked private, which necessitated the rapid commissioning of two flying squadrons: in brief, everything that could possibly happen at that crowded time was happening; and news-editors began to wonder why they lived.

Then June came to town, and what had to occur did occur! The Lord Mayor made his speech, the Archdeacon followed suit. A revolution in ideals was blowing up. What was Fleet Street to do? Should the circumstance be made a splash of; or interned in a few facetious paragraphs? What a pity, said they, it had not been kept till the year was in its wilderness!

The facts were too important to be buried and ignored. A Lord Mayor is not original, an Archdeacon not on the heights, for nothing! Editors can do most things; but any attempt on their parts to smother the influence of the fairies is as futile as the broom of Mrs. Partington; it merely demonstrates that they are only human after all.

The banquet and its tendencies had to be reported and commented on, with headlines. So the papers took it up.

Parliament, Gertie Feathergirl, war, actual and diplomatic, with all other matters of passing concern, were compelled to take their proper subordinate places in the daily prints and public interest.

The best of the newspapers, that which you and I support, O reader, began the Press crusade. It gave four columns of description and appeal on its principal page; and this was the heading:

OBERON SHALL BE KING.

And all the while Oberon was in one or other of his castles--in Ireland, in Wales, in Spain, in that dim country where the dreams are made, in Weissnichtwo--living the fairy life, making the birds, flowers, clouds and rivers happier; yet, never for the tithe of an instant, forgetting the madness of June.

The particular newspaper we refuse to have anything to do with, O reader--the newspaper whose opinions we despise and deplore--scoffed at the fairies in its usual cocksure way, as was to be expected! It professed to regard the Lord Mayor's plea as the agreeable sentiment of a well-dined gentleman, and made play with a leaderette in which Titania was called a myth and the fairies fruits of nightmare.

Such conduct on the part of a widely-read journal had to be answered.

June--let it be granted--treated its iconoclastic persiflage with the toleration of contempt. She, too, did not read the newspapers; but Archdeacon Pryde, who recognized that Sir Titus would not condescend to defend himself against such an attack, and remembering that he also was involved in that halfpenny condemnation, called a cab, packed a snuff-box with voice-lozenges, and went with heat and dudgeon to the headquarters of the offending newspaper.

He was welcomed with a military salute by the commissionaire at the gate; snapshotted thrice--when paying the cabman, eating a lozenge, and handing his card to a youth in the enquiry office. When inside the editorial sanctum, he was induced to pose for two flash-light photographs--one showing him engaged in earnest talk with the great man, the other with his hand resting on the tousled head of a printer's devil.

These pictures were to illustrate an "interview"--dictated to a shorthand writer--which explained the Archdeacon's ideas and intentions in connection with his and the Lord Mayor's new determinings, and so gave the Editor an excuse for a volte-face.

The Archdeacon was in a rapture of enthusiasm white hot. This prominent usefulness, or useful prominence, was gratifying. He promised to send his menu, that the inscribed resolutions might be reproduced in facsimile for the morrow's issue; and ended by asking the Editor to tea.

He went home more conscious than ever of being a man of influence and work.

So even the paper which you and I, O reader, habitually dislike and ignore, came over to the side of light.

The great organs of the Press, with amazing unanimity, rolled their machines, blew trumpets, and beat drums, in the interests of Fairy Reform. It was no sudden affair, that splendid combination; but a gradual all-round awakening to the benefit, delight, and need of preaching the causes of Elfdom.

The sober weeklies followed with such assumption of authority that they seemed to think they were leading. They had no hesitancy. The monthlies and quarterlies also, in due time, continued the chorus. It took about four months to bring this trend of influence to perfection, but then the cause went on like a tidal wave.

Oberon and Titania, strangely unconscious of the new-won rage for fairy goodness, became social factors; they left the select preserve of the Folklorists to become magazine favourites, the darlings of Fashion, high and low.

But this is very like anticipation, that bugbear of the sober historian, so we return to the present, as it was.

Emmanuel Oldstein found the keeping of his ideals a hard business. His midnight enthusiasm had strangely waned by the time of the milkman's chant.

The breakfast-table on the morrow morn was very like a battlefield; there were storms in five tea-cups. His family opposed his good intentions with earnestness, broken English, and some quotation of the Pentateuch, and thereby through the rule of contrariness, kept him to his purpose. Their obstinacy strengthened his. He stuck gamely to his guns, and began his course at once by doubling Ernie Jenkins' wages, enabling that young patriot to enlarge his indulgence in bitter beer, to wear three clean collars a week, and to promise Emily--with a few safeguarding "ifs"--that some day she might be "Mrs. J."

Emmanuel's family yielded to his wishes when he bought them over. He gave Mrs. Oldstein a purple silk dress trimmed with jet, a big bangle, and a gold watch so small that its works could never move. Max, who presumed to strange heights of impudent sarcasm on the subject of "the guvnor's flum," was given a minor partnership in the emporium, provided he was not merely just, but generous, in all his dealings.

He quickly agreed, and became a pompous person, forgetful of old associates.

Keeping the resolutions was certainly a hard and bitter business to the old man; but it did him good. He never lost sight of the promise of tea with the Archdeacon.

The hardest effort came when those pious folk next door took the bait, and approached Jabez Gordon of Jermyn Street for a loan--"to extend their efforts for the Cause."

Emmanuel unwisely informed Hannah of the fact. Her eyes blazed with angry happiness. At last! At last!

"Now squelch 'em, Pa!" she pleaded, in her commanding manner.

"Thertainly, my dear!" he said evasively; and hurriedly put on his hat to commune with himself in a walk round the squares. Here was a pass!

The undying remembrance of persecution, endured through ages by his people, flamed within him. Years of petty trading and the practices of sharp finance had not entirely subdued his inherited racial fire. And of all the Anti-Semite persecutors, none were so exasperating as those infatuated, contemptible sentimentalists--the pin-prick fanatics--who hoped to "convert" him, asking him to exchange the breadths of his own faith, based on centuries of national sacrifice and fighting history, for their traditionless, unimaginative, sapless sectarianism. It was a hard effort to spare those people at that moment of possible revenge.

Shylock had his twentieth-century opportunity.

When Emmanuel reached home again he was still undecided. An ancient battle was furious in his breast. He slept that night with a pile of the offensive mission notices beside his pillow, and turned and dreamed in a troubled way, murmuring Yiddish.

During breakfast he came to a decision, which he kept to himself.

"Father, I am glad you can punish them," said Hannah significantly, as she helped him with his outer coat. That was the only remark passed on the subject. Wisely, he held his peace.

He wrote from his office of finance in Jermyn Street--at first view you would think it a place of sale for strong cigars and strange red wines--to the sanctimonious young man, inviting Mr. Lemuel Buskin Junior to call upon Jabez Gordon "to complete the little matter of business about which Mr. Lemuel Buskin Junior had written."

Then Oldstein went on to the City, and got from Max a list of the workers--the sweated workers--who gave their lives to the making of his wealth. He would visit them all, and investigate their condition, doing whatever he could--be it little or much--to modify their wants and sufferings. The last on that list of mean, poor ones, was Sally Wilkins of Paradise Court. Already he had arranged or made purposes to pay every one of his employees a living wage, whatever the result might be in the increase of prices and consequent possible loss of customers. It was a bold policy. To Emmanuel Oldstein, even still more to Max, it was very like inexcusable sin. To pay more than need be for anything was to blaspheme against the gods of Economics. But he insisted on doing it, and did it. To anticipate for the last time, the policy paid.

Emmanuel's blood was up. He kept his written resolutions before him wherever he went. They and the menu reminded him of the Lord Mayor's appeal, of his own pledges, of his hopes of civic advancement, of the Archdeacon's invitation to tea. Again that night a battle raged in his breast. Hannah kept watchful eyes upon him.

On the following morning money-lender and victim emerged from their front-doors simultaneously. Neither appeared to notice the other--according to the canons of the unwritten law which rules the no-relation of next-door neighbours. None so far away as at the other side of a party wall!

The heir of the Buskins was less beautiful than good. His nose was the index to his mind. It pointed heavenwards. His thoughts were built of texts and depression. He had a saddened soul, but was never bankrupt of pious hope. He yearned that sinners should walk with him on the pearly pathways, and knew the naughty when he met them. So, in any case, it was not to be expected he should notice Oldstein, who in every respect offended and roused his religious antipathies. Lemuel was one of those whose thoughts reach the heights of the chimney-pots; they soar, yet are smothered with smuts.

Emmanuel noticed him. The Jew's keen eyes with a glance read the story told by the other's clothes. Lemuel was in blacks--his Sunday best. The coat had a tail; the hat was silken. He carried brown gloves and his mother's umbrella nicely rolled. His little sleek yellow moustache had upward twists; the whiskerettes which roused Hannah's ire and contempt were carefully trimmed. He wore a tartan necktie--to gratify that Scotsman, Jabez Gordon.

Oldstein grunted--there was joy in his nose--as they climbed into an omnibus together. The merchant took out his notebook and soon was controlling figures, while Lemuel stared at the advertisements or table of fares, stroked the careful crease in his trousers, and nervously fingered the points of his collar.

The omnibus stopped at Piccadilly Circus; they alighted. Lemuel had to ask the way to Jermyn Street; Oldstein knew it, and was soon in his office eagerly attacking a pile of letters. Five minutes later his one clerk--a magnificent creature whose greatest asset was a capacity for being stylish on very little--brought in Buskin's name.

"He must wait," said the master gruffly, "while I dictate letters. Hurry!"

He solemnly put the pile of mission notices on the desk before him, and closely attended to his correspondence.

Lemuel was waiting with the pitiful patience of a deserted lamb. His little heart was excitedly fluttering. He felt strangely fearful. He was not used to business. He would have given sixpence to have seen himself in a looking-glass, to be sure his hair was tidy, his tie straight. He eyed the dingy furniture of the stuffy room, and felt his courage going. He had expected to see more adornment than this; but he had read that the truly wealthy make the least display.

He fixed his gaze steadily on the door through which the clerk had gone, regarding it with mingled dread and longing. "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate" might well have been written above it.

Twenty minutes passed--Father Time, to spite his impatience, grossly enlarged every one of the twelve hundred seconds--before the splendid clerk reopened the door, ostentatiously closed an untidy shorthand book, and said: "Will ye go in?"

Lemuel Buskin rose trembling. His knees seemed to have forgotten their strength. But he remembered his mother's counsel, plucked up courage, and repeated mentally the stimulating chorus of a hymn. He was, as he entered the private office and took the offered seat, in such a whirl of confusion that he did not at once recognize the person of the financier.

Suddenly he was aware of Oldstein's identity, and blushed hotly.

"I ca-came to see Mr. Gordon!"

"I am Mithter Gordon!"

"Ja-Jabez Gordon?"

"Jabez Gordon! and you are Mithter Buthkin."

"But you--I--oh!"

"Exthactly! Oh! ith jutht the word. Mithter Buthkin, I'm glad to thee you. We're old acquaintanthes, we are, although you may not know it! You ask my daughter 'Annah 'ow much indebted to you we feel. My 'Annah lookth on you ath a brother, a Christian brother. Thee them billth?"--Emmanuel slapped the pile of mission notices with a dingy hand. Lemuel's last shadow of pluck was evaporating fast; but Oldstein with the question challenged his fanaticism.

"I'm proud to be a labourer in the vineyard!" was the surly defiant reply.

"And well may be! But you're an unthkilled labourer, Mr. Buthkin. Now I'm glad you've called, for I want to talk to you; you're goin' to listen and then we may do bithness."

Lemuel, surprised and unprepared, was cowed by Oldstein's decision and speech. He had bitterness on his tongue, but refrained from any retort.

"Do you believe in the fairieth, Mithter Buthkin?" was the unexpected question.

Lemuel could only stare and wonder.

"Answer me!"

"Certainly I do not!"

"That'th a pity. I do."

"I believe in higher things."

"And do you live up to them?"

Lemuel gasped.

"I didn't come here to be insulted."

"No, Mithter Buthkin, and I don't go 'ome to be inthulted with them things--do you recognithe 'em?--in my letter-box. Who put 'em there? Look at 'em well! You did. Why? Because you're a tuppenny little thkunk--I leave your parenth out of it, for they're too old to know better; they're past mendin'--you're a little tuppenny thkunk who prethumes to think that your belief ith the whole and only truth, and that my belief--which my fathers and their fathers 'eld for thouthandth on thouthandth of yearth, long before London wath more than a puddle, ith--I don't know what you think it ith. You can't compre'end it, Mithter Buthkin, no, you can't!"

The old man paused and watched his victim keenly. He then burst out with speech of passion.

"You to convert uth! You to wish to make uth such Christians as yourselves--nuisances in the street--thingin', blarin', thpeakin' uncharitably of our neighbourth! To convert uth! Father Abraham! I'd rather be a persecuted Jew, stoned, starved, beaten, 'ated--as we have been 'ated, starved and stoned for thousandth of yearth--than such a Christian! Even if I 'ad to be a damned thoul burnin', rottin', stinkin' in Gehenna for ever afterwardth, I would not be such a Christian! Thit down, Mithter Buthkin!"

Lemuel hesitated, but obeyed. He hated and feared this old man of anger, whose voice had become powerful with passion. Somehow the armoury of texts seemed insufficient.

"I athked you jutht now if you believed in the fairieth, and you thaid 'No.' Well, I do believe in 'em, and it ith well for you I do. I meant to punish you for worryin' us with them billth. I meant to crush you, to end you. There'th nothin' tho easy in bithness life ath for a finanthier to crush a poor man, if 'e likes. I meant to crush you and your people because of your cruelty to uth. I'd 'ave lent you moneys at such a rate of interest, on such artful terms, that you couldn't 'ave paid it back; and I'd 'ave bought you up and broke you, body and soul. But the other night I wath dinin' at the Mansion 'Ouse with the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and my friend the Venerable Reverend Archdeacon Pryde, who's athked me to tea with him. You read what appeared in the papers, 'aven't you? Everyone there made resolutions, and, like the others, I made promises, which I'm goin' to keep. Lucky for you, Mr. Buthkin, that I did. Now I'll begin by makin' you a prethent. I give you back them billth. Here they are. What common paper you do use for 'em! I could put you in the way of buying much better quality at the price you pay, I bet! Burn 'em! Take 'em 'ome and burn 'em! And now, if you like, we'll talk bithness. Mithter Buthkin, I was glad you wrote to me. Ha, ha!" His laugh was not musical. "You must 'ave been agreeably surprithed when you found Jabez Gordon was me! 'Annah would laugh, too, if I were to tell 'er 'ow you looked. But bithness now!"

Lemuel, who had just been feeling limp, made an effort to rouse himself. The genial note in Oldstein's voice was to him as balm in Gilead.

"You want a 'undred poundth--to thpread the cause, ath you call it. Well, I ain't goin' to lend you money to thpread any cause, but I'll be better than my bond: I'll lend you a 'undred at 10 per thent--50 per thent. would be low enough, too low for such rotten thecurity ath you can give--on condition that you pay your family's debts with it. I know about 'em, Mithter Buthkin; E. Oldstein's a knowing one. Also, that not one 'alfpenny of it goes to convertin' anybody. I've never made such an offer ath this before, and if any man 'ad told me a year ago I'd do it, I'd 'ave called 'im somethin'. You can thank the fairieth for it. But that ain't all! I'll give you ten pound at once--'ere they are, nice fat yellow boys, ain't they?--to buy food and clothin' for poor Christians--Christians, mind!--who need it. I'll trutht you to dithtribute the moneys honestly. Put 'em away carefully, Mithter Buthkin. To-night you can come to my 'ouse--it's next door to yours--number forty-eight, and fetch the loan and sign the document. Jutht realithe thith, Mithter Buthkin, I'm treatin' you wonderfully well--the fairieth 'ave made me do it!--but, mind my words, put another paper of any kind into my letter-box, or let me find you even printin' a bill about the Conversion of the Jewth--and fairieth or no fairieth--I'll crush you!"

Oldstein sat down exhausted. He took a strong cigar out of a drawer, cut and lighted it with quivering fingers.

Lemuel's mind was in a riot of confusion. Qualms of conscience, of gratitude, of fear swept through him. He rose mechanically, picked up and pocketed the ten sovereigns, and feebly squeezed Oldstein's proffered hand.

"Do you thmoke, Mr. Buthkin?" asked Emmanuel.

"No!"

"Does your Dad thmoke?"

"No!"

"That'th a great pity. So good for the 'eart! If you wanted to buy thome cigarth at any time, real 'Avanah, I could get you a 'undred--good uns, mind; strong, with a flavour--for a very low price. Well, theven o'clock to-night! 'Annah will be pleased to see you!"

Lemuel walked the whole way home, and more than once said, "Dash!"

CHAPTER X

THE IMPORTANCE OF BIM

It was some few weeks before Emmanuel Oldstein was able to fulfil his good intention of visiting Paradise Court. Sally was the last on his list, and not till June's name-month was half-way through could he come to her.

Meanwhile things had been happening. The newspaper crusade was going well, and the two from Fairyland were using their efforts to help it forward.

The gnome was becoming influential in Paradise Court. It was in especial his province. June, with her wings and magic, could visit a wide area; but he, with his poor inches and limitations, was necessarily stay-at-home. Partly through accident he began a revolution which was fated to have important effect in the recovery of London. This is how it happened.

The old flower-box whence he had taken the mould for their flourishing roof-garden was a faded, decrepit affair; otherwise its meagre quantity of wood would surely, long ago, have been broken and used as fuel. For years it had stood in a dank corner, barren and forgotten. Then, in a fit of prankishness, Bim carried down a violet, the only one gathered in the Mansion House posy, and planted it. June had given it power of life; with the tenacity of its kind it had struggled, flourished and come to bloom.

It was the gnome's treasure. He was proud of its being, and looked after it in a spoilt parental way, exaggerating its few qualities, blessedly blind to its defects.

For some days it bluely blushed unseen; and then came into a prominence which half pleased, half frightened it.

Poll Skinner cast her husband-blacked eyes upon it.

"Lor' lummy!" she cried, "a voilet!"

She looked at the flower and thereupon fell in a dream. A violet in Paradise Court! For the first time for years she was out of the ugly present, away from the base life about her.

Memories of old days, clean days, lived again. She saw herself as she was, before sin, want and selfishness had claimed and kept her. As she was! As she was! She remembered her father's cottage, with its garden of pinks and wallflowers. She remembered a wood near an ivied church; and was once again a girl, hunting for primroses, bluebells and violets. She remembered her white pinafore and her cleverness at weaving daisy-chains. How clean in all ways was that maiden life! And now---- Paradise Court! Drink and the devil had taken their toll! God!

Poll found tears in her eyes when she woke to the present. She wiped her face with grimy hands and left traces.

"Blimey, 'ere's old Poll drunk again!" said one of the knights of the place, a hulking fellow who called himself a dock-labourer, but whose idle hands were almost rooted to his pockets. "What yer starin' at, Poll?"

Poll indicated the flower. He saw it and stretched forth a hand.

"There ain't much to blub about in that!"

"Leave it be, Mike!" she cried, fearing his destructiveness. "Leave it be! It's a voilet!"

"A what? Let's 'ave a look! Who are ye shovin'? I want to look at it." She resisted him. "I'll wipe yer eyes if ye don't!"

He pushed forward with all his strength, intending, in sheer debasing mischief, to grab and crush the flower; but Poll struggled like a cat-woman to prevent him. He lost temper and struck her in the face. She, shrieking and shrill, tore his forehead with her nails, and tried to bite him. Her hair came loose. There was blood on her cheek. The animal emerged from Man.

The tumult of shuffling feet and foul speech brought others of the Court to doorways and windows. Women, who knew nothing of the cause of the combat, added their voices to Poll's in vigorous denunciation of Mike. The men--brave fellows!--looked on and grinned. One slunk away from the scene of the encounter; that was Skinner, Poll's natural protector and supposed husband. He went into the public-house and ordered beer.

The battle ended when Mike had accomplished his purpose and grasped the flower. He threw it on the pavement and ground it with his boot. Then he went away leisurely to enjoy refreshment after victory. His thirst had found an excuse. Poll's fury lapsed into noisy tears. She entered her one room, threw a rusty flat-iron on the floor, and nagged at the children.

Bim had watched this commotion from the parapet above. He sprawled on the cement-work, peeped at the tangle of heads below, and felt thoroughly frightened. Deeply did he regret that June was not there. She would have fought on the side of Poll and the violet, and given them victory. Had only her wand been left behind he could and would have intervened effectively. But nothing could be done. When he saw brutality win, he went moodily back to the fairies' garden, and pondered on ugly things.

The blues drove him into a brown study. He decided the affair should not end there. He uprooted a lingering primrose, and crept down with it. He carefully grubbed the mould in the box to freshen its jadedness, and planted the yellow flower--the fairies' oriflamme.

Back to the parapet he clambered to wait and watch.

Hours passed by. Nothing happened that day to reward his patience. The people of Paradise Court are not observant. The primrose lived and shone without appreciation until the morrow, when June magically drew attention to it. Some children first caught sight of it and curiously poked at it with sticks. It was a new wonder to them.

Poll saw the group about the box, and came to look. The wrath of yesterday was requickened within her. The children in their wisdom edged away from the virago, who carried the box to the sill outside her window, dumped it down; and then, in a voice of challenge, screamed out:

"'Ere's a primrose come! If anybody touches this, by Gawd, I'll murder 'im!"

Mike, having won his battle yesterday, was quite good-tempered to-day. He sauntered up to look at the flower and laughed.

"I won't touch it, Poll. You can 'ave yer measly primrose," and went off for another drink.

Poll hesitated, then followed him: their feud was drowned in beer.

The primrose lived for a week, and held a sort of continuous reception. Bim was as proud as a peacock about it. He got stiff-neck staring over the parapet, straining to hear the compliments and praise. Everybody in the Court paid it a daily visit and undue tributes. The children could hardly be induced to keep their hands from it. Their fingers itched to pluck; but Poll Skinner was a power to be feared. She kept sober in order to be the better sentinel.

Mike suddenly shifted the interest of Paradise Court to his abode by bringing home three flowerpots containing hyacinths--how he obtained them had better not be asked. As at the same time the primrose happened to fade, and its plant had no promise of buds, Poll felt chagrin. The balance of her world was shifted. Mike held the hub of the hemisphere.

She drank herself silly with gin, and beat her children frightfully; but the return of sober sanity brought new ideas. Poll rose to the occasion. She sent her "old man" to a distant churchyard to steal some good new mould; and then bought--actually bought--from the publican's wife, a rose-plant warranted to flower.

Poll bore it home triumphantly, while Paradise Court smiled.

Mike's hyacinths--in comparison with Poll's aristocratic plant--had now to take a second place, very far-behind, in the public interest. And it was no good making reprisals. Neither his wits nor his wealth would enable him to do better than Poll. Moreover, the fashion of flowers was spreading. Three other residents in the colony had put up rough window-boxes, with green things in them; and the children, keen to follow their elders, found tins, jam-pots, pickle-jars, and planted within them anything they could get; grass, if nothing of the flower kind was available.

Bim felt a third of an inch taller; he trod with an airier tread, now that his influence over Paradise Court had become so manifest. He laboured with Salvationist ardour to help the people; supplementing and moderating their energies, and encouraged the flowers to live. For hours he would sit in blest invisibility by one or other of the plants, enjoying the admiring remarks addressed to them, sharing the general satisfaction.

Families came to talk of weedy green things as if they were spreading chestnut-trees; while those members of the community who, having gone "hopping," had actual experience of wild life and woodland facts were regarded as travellers and oracles. Living up to their opportunities, they told vegetable counterparts of certain fish stories. Bim's blessed interference certainly caused some white stealth and a multitude of tarradiddles.

Nor was the indirect influence of the gnome yet at an end.

'Arry Bailey was the instrument of the next progressive step. He had some nasturtiums and was ambitious of getting them to climb in festoons round his window. He used nails, string, language and glue. At last he succeeded. For a time his nasturtiums were the rage. Their blazing colours and rapid growth made them popular. But Bailey, in whom the æsthetic sense must have been recovering after years of hibernation, felt that something was lacking. He smoked three ounces of shag and scratched his chin for hours on end before it dawned on him what it was.

Then he said "By gum"--that was all he said--and proceeded to surprise the Court by cleaning his window. One of the panes was badly cracked, the mark of some midnight fracas; so--more surprising still--he measured the gap, bought glass and putty, and entertained a Sunday crowd of chaffing, envious lookers-on by mending it himself, making a clumsy good business of it.

Bailey's act of reformation occasioned criticism and imitation--action is mostly imitation in Paradise Court. Before a further seven days had dawned and darkened not a window on any floor in the Court but was washed and polished. In cases where there was no money for mending, new paper--preferably illustrated--was put in broken places, window-sills and doorsteps were whitened.

The inhabitants began to feel proud, to give themselves airs, to wash their necks.

Curtains of all shapes and colours appeared, rooms became tidied: homes tolerable. Men stayed indoors to smoke their pipes and gossip, going less frequently to the public-house. Not that the improvement was so rapid as to seem violent. Paradise Court was, is, and will be till the trump, a home of conservatism. Its motion is that of a glacier. Yet it does move, and did. Though drunkenness and slovenliness, with brutalities of words and of fighting, were still over-frequent, there was real improvement, and a quiet growth of self-respect, which, after the lapse of months, had borne remarkable fruit. Bravo, Bim!

The gnome extended his efforts further afield, and was constantly dropping flowers before children in the alleys and other drearinesses of London, in order that they might be picked up, taken home, appreciated, loved, and wanted.

June, learning from him, was glad to follow his example. She scattered love-bringing blooms and blossoms--gathered without permission from the parks--wherever there were brown plain walls and ugliness. She wanted the fairies to come back to their ancient rights and rule; but felt they certainly would not stay where flowers were forgotten.

She longed--longed desperately--for the return of the elves to their ancient dominion over the town.

One night a company from Elfland made grand appeal to her. It was a full hour and more after midnight, and absolutely dark. No moon shone on the scene, no stars shed brightness from the sky.

Bim was sprawling on the roof-gutter lost in dreams. His head rested on a sparrow's deserted nest. June was in her bower, too weary for visions, even too weary for sleep. She was tired at heart, thoroughly, utterly tired! Her only comfort came from the flowers beaming about her. She felt the loneliness of London. Fairy memories called and called and called to her. She was weary of burdens. This pilgrimage in the dark city was dreary, heavy, grievous and horrible. But still, she must stay.

Her quick ears caught the rustling of many fairy wings in the distance; only one with sympathies sensitive and truly attuned to the wafting could have heard them so far away. She sat and saw elves on the wing. They were haze-shrouded, high in the sky above. Would they penetrate the murky canopy? Had they come in late answer to her appeals, to help with the burden, to share in the task of re-creating beauty in the wilderness?

She watched them wheeling in the upper air in distant luminousness, curving, descending. She grasped her wand and followed their progress intently, hoping all things, yearning to be with them again.

The flowers about June's bed, the flowers in the court below, lifted glad heads in greeting. They freshened visibly. Bim in his slumbers sighed, and comfortably turned as he slept.

The elves alighted on the roofs around. There were thousands of them. Half the folk of the Violet Valley, of the Land of Wild Roses, of other parts of Fairyland, must have been there. They were multitudinous, innumerable, and clustered on rims of chimneys, on angles of houses, on street-lamps and window-sills, making of dull commonplace a remarkable series of pictures. All the while they were singing songs of sweet appeal.

June donned her crown, while they hovered and settled, and stood to greet them. Some sparrows, surprised by the unwonted spectacle, woke and began chirping. It was beggarly music, monotonous the word for it: but it served. London, alas! had nothing better and the sparrows did their best. Fairy kindness overlooked the deficiencies.

Suddenly there was silence: elves and birds hushed.

"Welcome, sweet comrades from Fairyland!" said June. "I am glad you have visited me amongst these shadows. Will you stay and help to restore London to Oberon?"

"Nay, nay," answered a hundred voices, slender and silvern, from here and from there.

"June, our June!" a sparkling knight then cried to her. "Your going has brought gloom into the elf-countries. Oberon and Titania have been grieved and absent since your flight; all others of us have felt the changes. Come back to us! It is like living in a valley with the sunshine and moonlight always gone; like living in a wood where the flowers for want of blessings and dew are shrivelled. Change this for us, June! Come back, come back!"

"Come back, come back!" echoed the wide chorus, plaintively, pleadingly.

Clocks struck two. A cold wind came from the sea.

"Sisters and knights from the delightful countries," June answered. "To hear your voices is music to a heart which has hungered for melody. To be with you again and for ever is the dream of these days and nights. O Fairyland, Fairyland! But for me that cannot be, until this world-town of vanity and darkness is a part of Fairyland too. Help us, and work with us. Already Hope shines through the misery. Already we have been rewarded--Bim and I. We have begun well. Laughter and flowers bloom where a few weeks ago they could not. We are going to win. Men have listened to our bidding. Elf-rule is leading them. Their puppet limbs are bending to the light. They are beginning again in the darkest parts to live with beauty and love the fairies. Bear with us: and help them. Before next Mayday comes, I must deliver up this crown. Sweet knights and sister elves, so work with us that Oberon may be ruling over London again."

In answer a fairy song went rolling from the assembly, up and up, piercing the cloud overhead, discovering the stars. June rejoiced at the hearing, though still it was an appeal to her--a yearning appeal to her--to be done with her madness, to submit to Oberon, to return. June felt alone.

The new song wakened Bim. He sat up suddenly, ears pricked sharply with eager attention. Fairies in London!

He clambered amazedly up the slanting roof and knelt by the side of June. She laid hands on his shoulders. The two waited and watched.

In twos and threes, reluctantly, the fairies opened wings, and went away. Over the houses they journeyed, a glittering, saddened procession. Higher and higher, and farther and farther they flew. The sound of their chorus gradually diminished till there was silence--the silence of sleep-bound London--again.

Gone!

June gazed on her garden of flowers. The gnome crawled away sadly, and squatted by the chimney-pot, dangling his feet. He felt a solid piece of melancholy.

"That was a very nice dream," he said for comfort's sake; and found the words not comforting.

"Let us be doing things," June counselled.

CHAPTER XI

A PROSE INTERLUDE

Oldstein came at last to Paradise Court, and two good things resulted--Sally was taken out of her slave-life and sent to a boarding-school at the expense of her former task-master, and June went to tea with the Archdeacon.

Emmanuel had been for six weeks living up to his ideals. It was the hardest of tasks to him, but obstinate doggedness pulled him through. He had come actually to like doing good, and realized the subtle joys which live in generosity. He developed a habit--learned indirectly from the goodly practices of Dr. Johnson--of keeping chocolates and pennies in his pocket, and dropping one or other of them surreptitiously into the laps, pockets, or hands of children. June was proud to smiling-point of this, her least-likely pupil. He was doing the fairies' work so pleasantly.

And virtue brought other rewards--as it must do in a properly regulated existence. Emmanuel gave and gave, and still had a golden reservoir of wealth for capital use and enjoyment.

At last he felt justified in accepting the Archidiaconal invitation to tea. He paved the way of welcome characteristically by sending an express letter of reminder and explanation, and walked from Paradise Court to where the blue tramcars were running. After riding here and walking there, he arrived at the canonry.

June and Bim accompanied him; the fairy on the brim of his glossy hat, the gnome in the bulging breast-pocket. Bim gazed with insatiable curiosity at the passing phantasmagoria of human shadows. What a strange grey comedy it was!

The London streets were still a troublesome ghost-world to Bim. He could not overcome an unconquerable prejudice against shadows. They were born of the darkness; he liked things to be moonlit at least.

They came to the Archdeacon's garden. Its delicious peacefulness was to June the first thing in Cockneydom reminiscent of elvish glades. Enchantment seemed brooding over it.

The ancient trees and young dusty flowers, with the twittering of sparrows--only sparrows--about them, gave new significance to the hum of the distant traffic. It made the medley music. The old-world atmosphere of blessed repose brought solace to both of them. It gave June hope. It made her for the first time thoroughly confident of fulfilling her purpose.

Why should not a similar spirit of peace hold governance over every garden and public park in London? Wherever it reigned there would be sanctuaries for tired minds and strained nerves--havens of refuge from uproar and vulgarity. If Oberon's rule returned, anything and everything of the kind was possible; and something was begun.

Emmanuel pressed the button of the door-bell; and, having done so, trembled. A funeral-faced footman appeared and ushered him in.

The charm of the garden reigned also within the house. A silver-tongued clock sang five. It reminded June of Titania's voice when, once, the fairy-queen had surprised a blue-bell valley with a passing song.

June entered with Oldstein. Bim remained in the garden, playing puss-in-the-corner with some sparrows, to their fearful delight.

Evidently the footman did not approve his master's guest. There was an unnecessary air of imitation-lordliness in his demeanour, as he marched before Emmanuel. His body seemed mere idiotic backbone. His face wore an expression of patronage. June, indignant at his sublime churlishness, tossed a handful of magic over him, and watched the conceit shrivel. The pillar of salt turned to man. He was never a mere flunkey thereafter, and in course of time became a Sunday-school teacher.

"Delighted, delighted!" said the Archdeacon, pressing Mr. Oldstein's hand. Had it not been for the fairies the welcome would assuredly have been less cordial; but since the evening of Mayday there had been changes. The ecclesiastic was living up to his creed. He greeted Oldstein warmly, and wondered why he had come.

Emmanuel was awed and enchanted. Never had he dreamed that life could be so clean and precious as here he found it. He felt, poor man in the egoism of humble ignorance, a vulgar intruder; and for the first time in his span of existence, realized that his hands were large and his manners out of polish. Somehow the rings he wore made his fingers uglier.

Tea was brought in on a silver tray. The food was daintily insufficient. The Archdeacon sipped at a cup and talked long words. Oldstein said "Yeth," mumbled at his slices of butter spread with bread, and heard nothing. He mentally kicked himself for having blundered into that Anglo-celestial place. So it went on for a time.

The Archdeacon was bored.

The fairy seeing things awry, hastened to put them right. She hovered before the Archdeacon's head--her moving wings made music which only fairies could hear--and touched his lips with her wand. She recognized that he was the man to lead the talking. He became at once more sociable.

"Do you golf?" he asked.

"No, but I've thold golf-balls."

"Ah, you should play. You should join my new Association which pledges every member to use one club only--preferably the mashie--on a round."

Golf remained the subject while the tea lasted. The Archdeacon kept the talk going.

"So our movement of fairy reform goes ahead admirably," Dr. Pryde exclaimed, coming to the real subject at last, as he rose, stretched, and posed by the mantelpiece. "We are comrades under Oberon's banner--comrades in a growing and victorious army."

He admired his rolling periods, and took his box of lozenges from a drawer.

"Yeth," said the other, who still felt that his feet were all boots.

"I had a letter from the Lord Mayor this morning. Sir Titus--a wonderful man, wonderful man, truly one of us!--is instituting a new league--Titania's Bodyguard it is called, consisting of all sorts and conditions of old men and maidens, young men and children; to remove the blemishes which uglify--'uglify' is Alice's word, not mine--which uglify London."

He ceased his pompous talk to look pomposity. He caught his reflection in a mirror, and improved his deportment.

"Yeth," again Emmanuel faltered. He wanted to express views, but in that present state of shyness and nervousness his mind seemed mere whirl and pudding.

"Talking of Alice, we could do with a little more topsyturvydom in real life, could not we?" June smiled. Here was proof that she had him. "I wish Harlequin with his wand would transform some of our business men and Bumbles and give them better sympathies and wits."

"'Ear, 'ear!"

"What is generally wanted--almost before anything else--is the power to get out of the ruck of the commonplace, to look at facts from a new point of view. How blind we are to the obvious! It is possible every day to pass by and not notice a view which, if it were in another country, we should travel for days in discomfort to see. And why?--I ask you why?" He gazed at the ceiling, and waved a graceful hand.

"Goodneth knowth!"

The Archdeacon puckered his brows, and looked down at his interrupter with an expression of gentle remonstrance.

"The question was rhetorical, Mr. Oldstein," he said, in mild rebuke. "I repeat, Why? Because we are so used to it. A Londoner will see more beauty in a wood in May or June than the man who lives at its edge; but bring the yokel to London, and he will open his mouth with awe at buildings of beauty and history upon which the Cockney will strike the cheaper kind of matches. Familiarity breeds blindness."

"Yeth."

"It does indeed! The first thing is to teach the uses of the eyes; the next the joys of imagination. Those are indirectly the purposes for which the Lord Mayor's new movement--Titania's Bodyguard--is instituted. What a work we of the Bodyguard--I am its chaplain--what a work we have to do! To get representatives on the Borough Councils pledged to fulfil the gospel of sweetness and light; to insure that no houses designed and built in the future shall be hideous, or contradictions in style to each other--the brown Victorian age of architecture is past; to insist that exteriors be clean, and, where possible, brightly painted; and advertisements artistic; to take measures to abolish smoke and dust and flies; to distribute bulbs and flowering-plants, and give prizes for the best-loved gardens and windows; to encourage the growth of creepers about buildings; to plant trees, and establish fountains in the streets."

"Dear, dear! it'll cost a lot!" thought Emmanuel.

"There is much to be done even at the beginning. Then the next stage. To remove monstrosities in houses, courts, and slums; and generally to undo Mr. Jerry Builder. What a work! All but a few of the statues which frown on our squares and gardens must be chipped into little bits for road-mending. Throughout London, throughout England, there are statues not worth their weight in mud. They are mere blackened bathos--futile memorials to the generally forgotten: tasteless, obstructive, stupid. Down with the bronze gentlemen in mutton-chop whiskers and Roman togas who pose like sorry Pecksniffs."

"'Ear, 'ear!" said Mr. Oldstein, who was beginning, at last, to feel at home, though who Pecksniff was, bless you! for his life he didn't know.

June had indeed used her wand with effect. Host in his eloquence, and guest in his appreciation, beamed on each other, mutually pleased. The Archdeacon was delighted with his flow of words. The fact that his new elf-induced ideas were fresh to him increased the interest and respectful admiration with which he always heard his own utterances. He actually forgot the lozenges in his excitement; and noted the admiration shining in Oldstein's eyes. He felt a reformer, a builder of progress, a force and a light on the side of the angels. He was pleased with himself.

The fairy was satisfied with her work. She fluttered, singing the while, through the open window, to quicken the slumbering joys of the garden. She lingered among the flowers, giving them refreshment and radiance; and hovered about the branches of the trees, studying their conditions, admiring their long patience.

She called Bim to her, gave him her wand, sent him out to the world wandering. The sparrows chirped good-night, and went their ways to rest before another day of struggle, squabble and feasting.

Meanwhile, the Archdeacon continued happily in full swing.

"All forms of stone memorial are futile," he declared, pushing back his hair. "The day must come when they are mere lumber, commemorating foolishness. The builders of the pyramids are now but names. The Pharaohs hoped, by constructing those colossal tombs, to buy themselves eternal glory; but we, remembering the cruelties--the blood and the suffering--which went to their building, think of them only as colossal mementoes of shame."

The Archdeacon frowned, shook his head, and felt the artistic call for a significant pause.

Oldstein was fired by the reference to the first oppressors of his People. He forgot his awkward shyness, and broke out with vigorous expressions of approbation and agreement. He was not rebuked now. Applause is tolerable even to the elect. The Archdeacon graciously beamed.

It was then that June returned to the room, and realizing that the privilege of speech had so far been made a monopoly, threw a spell at Emmanuel.

Her will was a law obeyed.

The Archdeacon found himself not merely mum, but verbally besieged. He tried to make sorties, to resume the thread of his argument; but until June's spell was worn away, Oldstein's eloquence proved irresistible. His host could only fumble about his desk and pockets searching for the lozenge-box which was on the mantelpiece behind him, and occasionally agree with "Yes."

"That wath a great evenin' at the Mansion 'Outh," he declared. "I shall never forget it; and, Mithter Archdeacon, nothing throughout the proceedings imprethed me like your appeal for charity among workerth for the cauth of right. I thaid to mythelf, 'That'th a man'--I thaid--'and thith ith a lethon! If that dignitary of the Church ith brave enough to thay thith, there's 'ope.' I altho thaid to mythelf, 'It ithn't many parsons with the pluck to make such an appeal to people who would most thertainly take 'em at their word.' But you did it, Mithter Pryde! you did it! At my synagogue at all events your words 'ave been acthepted."

"Yes?" This tribute to his influence was delightful, flattering. It compensated for the interruption of speech.

"Yeth! Our pastor went out of 'is way to order some coals from the local churchwarden last week, and expressed the 'ope that before long some prayer said in churches against Turks, Jews and Infidels might be left unthaid!"

"Ah!"

The Archdeacon sat in his chair, and hid his face in his hands, thinking.

"Make your appeal again, Mithter Pryde; and again and again. It ith, I assure you, very poor fun being the under dog, as we Jews 'ave been for ages! Even nowadays it ith only necessary to be a Jew to know what it ith to be despithed. Not that thome of uth mayn't detherve to be despithed. We 'ave black sheep among us, as you 'ave, and it'th easy to be 'orrid when you're 'ated. I've been 'ated and struck"--there was fire in Oldstein's glance--"and I've 'it back, and taken good care to 'urt. Well, I'm sorry for many things. I wath a 'ard master. I worked 'ard mythelf, and worked others to the uttermost. I took all the shekels that were due to me, and would have taken more if I could 'ave got 'em--yeth, I would. People theemed to expect me to plunder 'em; I did my best not to dithappoint 'em. And why was I so 'ard? Why did I 'ate all Gentiles? Why was my 'eart full of bitter malice to all exthept my own people?"

"Ah, who knows? who knows?" the Archdeacon said to the ceiling.

Oldstein, carried away by the passion of his own words, glared at the questioner.

"The quethtions were rhetorical, Mithter Pryde," he answered softly. "Why? Becauthe I was fighting the old old battle which my fatherth and their fatherth 'ad to fight since sin made my people subject." He raised his voice. It was as the voice of a prophet. The Archdeacon, listening, wondered, and forgot to notice the slurred words and broken pronunciation which proclaimed this Jew a stranger within the gates. "Yearth ago--in the dayth of the Pharaoh you mentioned--the Curse was fastened upon uth; even now the yoke ith not removed; we are tortured with its barbs and burdened with its misery. We are, even now, regarded by many as rogues and thieves and money-tyrants, but with all our faults as a race we do not detherve it. It ith ath a race we are judged, and ath individualth of a race we are punished. We are regarded as unwashed foreigners, as unclean beasts. The whole tone of religion is in this rethpect againtht its true thelf. In teaching love for all men, it alwayth forgeth the foreign Jew. Mithter Pryde, will you preach and teach and act so that we--the poorest and the 'umblest and the worst of us--may get the tolerance and fair play which is every man's right?"

Oldstein had exhausted the spell. He had said his say, had spoken for his people, with warmth and earnestness. His burst of eloquence was done. He was again one of the rank and file of Judaism, conscious of his pride of race, conscious at the same time of an incomprehensible sense of inferiority to this large, clean, pompous, well-intentioned Englishman. Why was it so? Was it because, for years upon years, he and his forebears, though inheriting the responsibilities of agelong aristocracy, had forgotten their inheritance, and been content to cringe before the powerful and wealthy, pleased to pander to their vanity and vices, for the sake of the shekels of trade?

There was silence--almost noisy with thought--for more than a minute.

June with her wand had stirred deep pools. The insoluble problems of Israel were for awhile alive again. Another stage in the long-drawn opposition of Gentile and Jew was manifested. Can that antagonism ever be ended? Is such a fact to be numbered among human possibilities? Questions, questions!

The Archdeacon, touched by Oldstein's earnestness, lost his pomposity, and forgot his poses. He leaned forward; put a hand on his guest's shoulder.

"I wish we could all of us get hold of the larger charity," he said earnestly. "When I spoke at the Lord Mayor's table, I confess to you I did not quite know all that there was in my words. I gave rein to ideas I had never allowed to have expression, even in my thoughts, before. The fairies--we put it all down to them, don't we?--the fairies must have made me speak as I did. That was a strange night. Reform was in the wine-cups. We built Quixotic dreams, and pledged ourselves to abide by them. Well, I won't repine. I am heartily glad I spoke as I did. You remind me of the obligations which fall upon every responsible religious man. I will try harder to live up to the ideals. Never again will I, by thought or implication, judge or condemn the honest opinions of others; but will believe that all in some measure or degree are pushing forward God's progress. Our differences, at their greatest, are trivial; in much of our work we should unite."

They shook hands, confirming the pledge.

The clock sang six-thirty.

"How the time has flown!" cried the Archdeacon, glad to be out of a scene. "Will you excuse me? I must hurry and dress. I dine at eight with the Duchess of Armingham. I was going to say such a great deal to you about cemeteries. But another time! So glad to have seen you. Good-bye!"

Oldstein went. Good-bye to him also, so far as this historical work is concerned!

June decided to accompany her ecclesiastic to the Duchess's table. She had seen the under side, now for the over side of human life. Sing Hey! for the haut ton! as a suburban poet would put it.

She sailed upstairs to the dressing-room and helped. Never before had razor shaved so smoothly, or valet been so perfect a machine.

When the Archdeacon drove westward, he was in the happiest condition of mind. He had become the compleat optimist. Everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

The dear fairies!

CHAPTER XII

A NIGHT OUT

Gnomes are notoriously irresponsible; but town-life and a high purpose had brought changes to Bim. He crawled under the dark green gate which bounded the carriage-drive, and strode into the world with something of that air of responsibility which hedges the dignity of a newly-elected alderman.

Bim had no illusions as to his present capacity. June's wand made him a power, and he knew it. He was able to control mortals; and confidently promised himself happenings.

He wandered through streets and passages, indifferent and ignorant as to where they should lead him, indeterminate as to what he should do. He saw a hansom crawling. This would help as well as anything. Imitating June's action on the night of the banquet, he waved the wand, and by elfin will-power compelled the cabman to rein in his drowsy steed.

Bim clambered up the horse's off hind-leg, and ran along the dragging reins to the roof. As soon as he was comfortably installed there, the driver, who took things quite as a matter of course, gave the necessary click with his tongue, and started the many-times great-grandson of Bucephalus and Rozinante.

Bim "did" some main streets. He controlled the man, and induced him to drive along the more ambitious ways and where there were shining shops. He watched the coming and going of people, and made up his mind what to do.

He was touched to see the streams of poor women and children shopping and errand-running. His sympathy exaggerated their seeming fatigue. They looked to him so weary that he commanded the cabman to invite some of them to accept lifts along the way.

"Tired, mother?" the driver--good soul!--would say to an old lady, toiling along with her evening burden of parcels. "In yer git!" Or to a child, "Jump in, ducky! I'd like to give you a ride. Where do you want to go?"

So it went on for an hour. Cabby felt like Christmas.

Then the unrewarded horse began to move wearily, and show other signs of having done enough. Bim removed the spell, clambered from his seat on the roof down the back-way of the cab, and left the driver fastening the horse's nose-bag to its business-place.

"The time of my life," said Jehu enthusiastically to a surly colleague. "I've had a most enjoyable time. Now you 'ave a shot, old chap," and explained in detail his actions and happiness.

"Eh?" grunted the other, contempt, incredulity, and refusal expressed in the interjection.

That was enough for Bim. He smote the churl sharply on the boot. Conversion followed immediately.

"Well, suppose I do," he said, as he wiped imaginary froth from his lips. "I 'aven't done so badly to-day. I will for an hour--blowed if I won't!--then I'll pass the job on."

Bim found himself on the Embankment near Cleopatra's Needle. He took careful hold of the wand, and clambered to the head of the sphinx which gazes eastward. Seated there, he tried to think out a programme of activities, and watched the grey river journeying on slowly, silently; different, so different, from the flood of traffic, the lighted tramcars, hooting automobiles, dashing carriages, with their freights of mortals, which rushed noisily by. Oh, the restlessness of man! The gnome was impressed with the wisdom of the water. It bore seaward, silently, the thoughts of the sphinx, which with wide-opened eyes watched London.

It was then that June saw him. She was driving westward in the Archdeacon's brougham, and shone, a little being of light, gladdening the gloom of the carriage. Bim waved the wand triumphantly to her. She threw him smiles. Happy gnome! His earnestness took fire immediately. Then altruism merged with mischief. He threw his plans and programme to the eight winds. He would paint the town a fairy red. Why not run amok?

He jumped from the sphinx, plump on to the peaked cap of a passing police inspector, and flooded the official with magic. A sergeant came up and saluted.

"Good-evening, Baines," said the inspector. "Tell the men to be extra kind to all poor chaps to-night. Tell 'em to have blind eyes for the homeless and hungry. The fairies would wish it. Tell 'em to pass this order on; we must please the fairies."

The sergeant stared. This was unprecedented. What was authority coming to?

"Right, sir," he answered, and saluted again. "I'll see to it," and did so.

The inspector marched on to Scotland Yard, more than usually pleased with himself.

Bim happened then to notice a strange creature sprawling at the end of a seat. Curiosity compelled him to spring. He alighted on a lap.

Everyone in Fairyland is naturally partial to poetry and in love with love. One of the purposes of the elves is to help the affected and idealize the sentiments of lovers, making them worthy of their privileges. They fulfil this purpose faithfully. When the courses of Cupid run smoothly the elves have been helpful. Unhappy love-affairs are invariably those unblessed by Oberon's people. They keep sharp eyes ready for the hindering of the plans of worldly-wise parents.

Bim studied a strange-looking beast. It seemed to consist of a large, much-ribboned hat, several arms, and a sprawl. Lovers! The nose of Her was in His neck. There was an occasional move and tremor, followed by a sounding kiss, one of the kisses that hit. Passers-by were many, but Love cared not a jot for anything--but Love! The curious and contemptuous had a hundred opportunities for cynical judgment; which they used, only to be entirely ignored.