However, here come those ghosts, still very much alive and shilling in hand, some from Knightsbridge, some from Chelsea, some from Westminster. “Strombolo House,” which used to charge half-a-crown for its fireworks, so famous were they, is closed. To be sure the “Monster” is still open, but there are no fireworks in the entertainment there to-night; a performing bear is all that the “Monster” can offer to-night. The “Orange Tea Gardens” are gone for good: St. Barnabas’ Pimlico, will occupy their site, and on it cause as much religious rowdiness in another twenty years as ever there was of secular rowdiness in the past. “Jenny’s Whim” hard by the old turnpike has already been covered with builder Cubitt’s beastly foundations. There is no longer much competition with “Neptune’s Grotto” in the manor of Ebury. A few pause in Vauxhall Bridge Road when they see the hackney-coaches filled with merry parties bound for the most famous gardens of all; but they decide to visit them another evening, and they cross the road to Willow Walk, where one remembers seeing Jerry Abershaw’s body swinging from the gibbet on Putney Common and that scarcely thirty years ago, and another marvels at the way the new houses are springing up all round. Some shake their heads over Reform, but most of them whisper of pleasure and of love while ghostly moths spin beside the path, and the bats are seen hawking against the luminous west and the dog-star which was glimmering long before his fellows is already dancing like a diamond in the south. While the public was strolling on its way to “Neptune’s Grotto,” within the gardens themselves Mr. Seedwell, the proprietor, and Madame Oriano made a final inspection of the firework platform. “You think she can do it?” he was saying. “Offa coursa she can do it,” Madame replied sharply. Mr. Seedwell shook his head in grave doubt. Weighing eighteen stone and a bit over he found it hard to put himself in Mademoiselle Letizia’s place. “I don’t want an accident,” he explained. “The magistrates are only too glad of an excuse to close us down these days.” “Dere willa not be no accident,” Madame Oriano assured him. And Mr. Seedwell, looking at the raven-haired and raven-beaked and raven-eyed woman beside him, took her word for it and went off to see that all was ready inside the house for the entertainment of his guests. Madame Oriano squeezed a handful of her yellow satin gown. “_Bagnato!_”[1] she murmured to herself. Then looking across to one of the alcoves she called out in a shrill harsh voice, “Caleb! Caleb Fuller!” [1] Wet.