These six attracted every energetic or discontented boy in the neighbourhood. Abercorran House was as good as a mountain or a sea-shore for them, and was accessible at any hour of the day or night, “except at breakfast time,” said Mr Stodham--for there was no breakfast-time. Mr Stodham was a middle-aged refugee at Abercorran House, one for whom breakfast had become the most austere meal of the day, to be taken with a perfectly adjusted system of times and ceremonies, in silence, far from children and from all innovation, irregularity, and disorder. Therefore the house of the Morgans was for him the house that had no breakfast-time, and unconsciously he was seeking salvation in the anarchy which at home would have been unendurable. Mr Stodham was not the only client who was no longer a boy, but he and the few others were all late converts; for, as I have mentioned, boys forsook Abercorran House as they grew up. Parents, too, looked foul-favouredly on the house. The family was irregular, not respectable, mysterious, in short unprofitable. It may have got about that when Mr Morgan once received a fountain-pen as a gift, he said he did not want any of “your damned time-saving appliances.” Of course, said he, some people could not help saving time and money--let them--they were never clever enough to know what to do with them, supposing that their savings were not hidden out of their reach like their childhood--but it had not occurred to him to do either, so he gave the pen to the little milk-boy, advising him to give it away before it got a hold on him. This child had delighted Mr Morgan by coming up the street every day, singing a filthy song. It was a test of innocence, whether the words of it did or did not make the hearer wish that either he or the singer might sink instantaneously into the earth. Mr Morgan did not like the song at all. The words were in no way better than those of a bad hymn, nor was the tune. But he liked what he called the boy’s innocence. Ophelia only sang “By Gis and by Saint Charity” under cover of madness. At the worst this boy made no pretence. Mr Morgan argued, probably, that one who had such thoughts would not have the impudence to sing so except to a select audience; he had no doubt of this when the boy sang it once on being asked to in the Library. I do not know what happened, beyond this, that Mr Morgan looked as if he had been crying, and the boy never sang it again. If this got about, few could think any better of the Morgans at Abercorran House. Moreover, the window frames and doors were never painted, and the front gate remained upright only because it was never closed; and on any sunny day a man passing down the lane was sure of hearing men and boys laughing, or Jessie singing, and dogs barking or yawning, pigeons courting, over the fence. CHAPTER V AURELIUS, THE SUPERFLUOUS MAN