As for Number Three, I could tell you a little story about him. He has had a love-affair. There was a time when he too joined in the dance and song, as one might say; but all that is over for him. One morning he turned up late, his usual merry call changed to a croak like that of a bull-frog virtuoso. I peered between the curtains to make sure that it was not Number Five (as yet hypothetical); but no--it was Three, with a look on his face that could only bear one interpretation. Belinda had been perverse, unkind, icy--had, in fact, thrown him over. You could read it in the angle of his cap, in the broken lace dragging from his boots, in his shuffling progress, and in the dulled gleam of his brass-mounted cans. From that date he became a frowning pessimist, perpetrating wheezes and squeaks and mumblings, quaverings and hoarse murmurs, instead of the customary sportive yelp. 'Tis an unkind world, according to Number Three. Number Four generally arrives as the lingering chatter of his predecessors dies away. He is rotund, judging by his voice (I have not yet seen him); also I should say that he goes in for physical culture. For, by the sounds that ascend to my window, his procedure is as follows: he unhooks the empty can from the railings of the opposite house and dashes it violently upward against the wall, catching it on the rebound. This action he repeats a few times just to get into form; it is, as it were, a muscular prelude. Then, taking seven or eight empty tins from his trolley, he juggles with them, not very expertly, for some of them break away into neighbouring areas and have to be retrieved; or he will set the whole lot in the road and kick them round for five minutes, brilliantly and wonderfully. This warms him. Picking them up, he spends a relatively quiet interlude in sorting out the one he wants, then fills it, bangs the lid down, and rehangs it in position. Having repeated the process with the remainder, he glows with a sense of duty done, and bursts into his farewell song; I often wish that it was his swan-song. He produces in this vocal valediction noises which to the ears of a Futurist composer might seem as Olympian music, but which to my insufficiently educated taste are merely excruciating. These, then are my four pets. I value them, for they teach me self-denial and self-restraint; they rouse me at an hour when I might otherwise be lost in slothful sleep; and they assure me that there is a sphere in which taxes and politics really do not matter in the slightest. Some day, I suppose, they will grow up. What will become of their talents in the world of men it is beyond me to imagine. But Number Four seems to have the makings of a politician. * * * * * [Illustration: The Browns have taken the advice of the railways and newspapers to "go early" for their seaside holidays.] * * * * * TWO EYES OF GRAY.