"I didn't forget about you," she said. "But I asked mummy about you once, and she said you were all nonsense, and I wasn't to think things like that." "Ah! your mother's forgotten altogether. She knew me once, but she hasn't wanted me for a very, very long time. She'll see me again, though, one day." "I'm so glad you've come. You won't go away again now, will you?" "I never go away," he said. "I'm always here. I've seen everything you've been doing, and a very dull time you've been making of it." He talked to her and told her about some of the things the other children in the Square were doing. She was interested a little, but not very much; she still thought a great deal more about herself than about anything or anybody else. "Do they all love you?" she said. "Oh, no, not at all. Some of them think I'm horrid. Some of them forget me altogether, and then I never come back, until just at the end. Some of them only want me when they're in trouble. Some, very soon, think it silly to believe in me at all, and the older they grow the less they believe, generally. And when I do come they won't see me, they make up their minds not to. But I'm always there just the same; it makes no difference what they do. They can't help themselves. Only it's better for them just to remember me a little, because then it's much safer for them. You've been feeling rather lonely lately, haven't you?" "Yes," she said. "It's stupid now all by myself. There's nobody to ask questions of." "Well, there's somebody else in your house who's lonely." "Is there?" She couldn't think of any one. "Yes. Your father." "Oh! Father----" She was uninterested. "Yes. You see, if he isn't----" and then, at that, he was gone, she was alone and fast asleep. In the morning when she awoke, she remembered it all quite clearly, but, of course, it had all been a dream. "Such a funny dream," she told her nurse, but she would give out no details. "Some food she's been eating," said her nurse. Nevertheless, when, on that afternoon, coming in from her walk, she met her dark, grubby little father in the hall, she did stay for a moment on the bottom step of the stairs to consider him. "I've been for a walk, daddy," she said, and then, rather frightened at her boldness, tumbled up on the next step. He went forward to catch her.