Teddy heard his father strike a match and settle back into his chair. In the quiet that followed, Teddy’s thoughts returned to the channels out of which they had been diverted. Funny! Love was the happiest thing in the world, and yet--yet it hadn’t made the people whom he knew happy. Harriet was in love; and Hal with Vashti; and Vashti---- He remembered another sequence of people who hadn’t been made happy by love. Mrs. Sheerug hadn’t, even though she was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of London and had run away with Alonzo to get him. Mr. Hughes hadn’t, for his Henrietta had gone up in a swing-boat and had failed to come down. Most distinctly Jane hadn’t. And his mother and his father--concerning them his memories contradicted one another. Was Dearie afraid of the ladies who came to have their portraits painted? Why should she be, when Jimmie Boy was already her husband? He shifted his nose to a new place on the window; the old place was getting wet. And then there was Mr. Yaffon. Mr. Yaffon lived next door and seemed to sum up the entire problem in a nutshell. His neighbors accounted for his oddities by saying that long ago he had had an unfortunate heart affair. He had a squeaky voice, was thin as a beanpole and very shabby. His legs caved in at the knees and his shoulders looked crushed, as if a heavy weight was perpetually pressing on his head. He didn’t go to business or paint pictures like other people. In winter he locked himself in a backroom and studied something called philosophy; the summers he spent in his garden, planting things and then digging them up. He was rarely seen in the street; when he did go out his chief object seemed to be to avoid attracting attention. By instinct he chose the side which was in shadow. Hugging the wall, he would creep along the pavement, wearily searching for something. At an interval of a dozen paces a fox terrier of immense age followed. Teddy had discovered the dog’s name by accident He had stopped to stroke it, saying, “He’s nearly blind, poor old fellow.” Mr. Yaffon had corrected him with squeaky severity: “Alice is not a fellow; she’s a lady-dog.” That was the only conversation he and Mr. Yaffon had ever held. Since then, without knowing why, he had taken it for granted that the adored one of the unfortunate heart affair had been named Alice. He accounted for their separation by supposing that Mr. Yaffon’s voice had done it. The reason for this supposition was the green parrot.