"Well, if you ever need a home, the basement's vacant and there ain't a better basement in Our Square." Annie Oombrella began to cry quietly, and Schepstein went on about his business. Through the ensuing years many women cried quietly or vehemently, according to their natures, and many men went away from places that had known them, to be no more known of those places; and the little Kingdom of Sorrows, shattered, blood-soaked, and unconquerable, stood fast, a bulwark between the ravager of the world and his victory until there sped across the death-haunted seas the army that was to turn the scales. Our Square gave to that sacrifice what it can never recover: witness the simple memorials in Our Square. Many people see ghosts; Our Square is well haunted, as befits its ancient and diminished glories. Few hear ghosts. This is as it ought to be. In their very nature, ghosts should be seen, not heard. Yet, in the year of grace, 1919, under a blazing September sun, with a cicada, vagrant from heaven knows whence, frying his sizzling sausages in our lilac bush, and other equally insistent sounds of reality filling the air, my ears were smitten with a voice from the realm of wraiths. "Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees," it cried on a faint and cluttering note. "Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees à raccommoder." Over in the far corner of the park an apparition moved into my visual range. It looked like Plooie. It moved like Plooie. It was loaded like Plooie. It opened a mouth like Plooie's and emitted again the familiar though diminished falsetto shriek. No doubt of it now; it _was_ Plooie. He had come back to us who never thought to see him again, who never wished to see him again, still unpurged of his stigma. As he passed me, I acknowledged his greeting, somewhat stiffly, I fear, and walked over to Schepstein's. There in the basement, amid the familiar wreckage as of a thousand umbrellas, sat little Annie. "Bonjour, Dominie," said she wistfully. "Good-morning, Annie. So you are back." "Yes, Dominie. Is there need that one wash the step at your house?" "There is need that one explain one's self. What have you been doing these three years?" "I work. I work hard." "And your husband? What has he been doing?" I asked sternly. Annie Oombrella's soft face drooped. "Soyez gentil, Dominie," she implored. "Be a kind, good man and ask him not. That make him so triste--so sad." "He doesn't look well, Annie." "He have been ver' seeck. Now we come home he is already weller." "But do you think it is wise for you to come back here?" I demanded, feeling brutal as I put the question. Annie Oombrella's reply did not make me feel any less so. She sent a quivering look around that unspeakably messy, choked-up little hole in the wall that was home to Plooie and her. "We have loved each other so much here," said she.