“A bear,” he said, “is really an extraordinary animal. What wise little eyes he has! I do think he’s a marvellous creation! My cats will have to go without their dinner, though. I was going to buy it with that threepence.” I begged to be allowed the privilege. “Willingly!” he said. “Shall we go in here? They like cod’s head best.” While we stood waiting to be served I saw the usual derisive smile pass over the fishmonger’s face. But my little old friend by no means noticed it; he was too busy looking at the fish. “A fish is a marvellous thing, when you come to think of it,” he murmured. “Look at its scales. Did you ever see such mechanism?” We bought five cod’s heads, and I left him carrying them in a bag, evidently lost in the anticipation of five cats eating them. After that I saw him often, going with him sometimes to buy food for his cats, which seemed ever to increase in numbers. His talk was always of his strays, and the marvels of creation, and that time of his life when he played the flute at the Harmony Theatre. He had been out of a job, it seemed, for more than ten years; and, when questioned, only sighed and answered: “Don’t talk about it, please!” His bumpy landlady never failed to favour me with a little conversation. She was one of those women who have terrific consciences, and terrible grudges against them. “I never get out,” she would say. “Why not?” “Couldn’t leave the house.” “It won’t run away!” But she would look at me as if she thought it might, and repeat: “Oh! I never get out.” An extremely Scottish temperament. Considering her descent, however, she was curiously devoid of success, struggling on apparently from week to week, cleaning, and answering the bell, and never getting out, and wondering why she kept my little old friend; just as he struggled on from week to week, getting out and collecting strays, and discovering the marvels of creation, and finding her a funny woman. Their hands were joined, one must suppose, by that dead child. One July afternoon, however, I found her very much upset. He had been taken dangerously ill three days before. “There he is,” she said; “can’t touch a thing. It’s my belief he’s done for himself, giving his food away all these years to those cats of his. I shooed ’em out to-day, the nasty creatures; they won’t get in again.” “Oh!” I said, “you shouldn’t have done that. It’ll only make him miserable.” She flounced her head up. “Hoh!” she said; “I wonder I’ve kept him all this time, with his birds and his cats dirtying my house. And there he lies, talking gibberish about them. He made me write to a Mr. Jackson, of some theatre or other--I’ve no patience with him. And that little bullfinch all the time perching on his pillow, the dirty little thing! I’d have turned it out, too, only it wouldn’t let me catch it.” “What does the doctor say?”