I am a London house and a very little house, standing in a fashionable square near Hyde Park. I have known my ups and downs. Once was the time when I was almost in the country and the link-boys used to make a fuss at having to escort my lady so far in her sedan-chair. It's a long way to the country now, for the city has spread out miles beyond me. Within sight through the trees at the end of the square red motor-buses pass, bumping their way rowdily down to Hammersmith and Kew. In my young days these places were villages, but I am told they are full of noises now. I have at least escaped that, for our square is a backwater of quiet and leads to nowhere, having an entrance only at one end. All the houses in the square were built at the same time as I was, which makes things companionable. We all look very much alike, with tiny areas, three stone steps leading up from the pavement, one window blinking out from the ground-floor, two blinking out from each of the other floors and a verandah running straight across us. In summer-time the verandah is gay with flowers. Our only difference is the colour we are painted, especially the colour of our doors. Mine is white; but some of our neighbours' are blue, some green, some red. We're very proud of the front-doors in our square. In the middle stands a railed-in garden, to which none but our owners have access. Its trees are as ancient as ourselves. Behind us, so hidden that it is almost forgotten, stands the grey parish-church, surrounded by a graveyard in which many of the people who have been merry in us rest. For some years we were what is known as a “gone down neighborhood,” till a gentleman who writes books bought us cheap, put us in repair and rented us to his friends. This has made us very select; since then we have become again fashionable. Now you know all that is necessary to form a mental picture of us. Because we are so small, we are sometimes spoken of as “Dolls' House Square.” All the things that I shall tell you I do not pretend to have witnessed, for houses have to spend their lives always in the one place--they cannot ride in taxis and move about. We gain our knowledge of how the world is changing by listening to the conversations of people who inhabit us; when night has fallen we mutter among ourselves, passing on to one another beneath the starlight down the lamp-lit streets the gossip we have overheard. Whatever of importance we miss, the churchbells tell us. Big Ben, with his sweet tenor voice, booming out the hours, is in this respect particularly thoughtful. [Illustration: 0025] So now, having explained myself, I come to my story of the little lady who needed to be loved, but did not know it, and the wounded officer who wanted rest. CHAPTER II [Illustration: 9029]