Mrs. Ward was curiously clear about that. She said she often thought about Mr. Stelling sitting there after his day’s work. It must have been very pleasant for him, and he seemed to miss this luxury in Dalston more than anything. Once Ernie, in a friendly mood, had taken him into the four-ale bar of “The Unicorn” at the corner of the Sheldrake Road, but Mr. Stelling did not seem happy. Ernie acknowledged afterwards that it had been an unfortunate evening. The bar had been rather crowded, and there was a man and two women who had all been drinking too much. In any case, Mr. Stelling had been obviously restless there, and he had said afterwards: “It is not that one wishes to drink only....” And he had shaken his fat little head, and had never been known to visit “The Unicorn” again. Mr. Stelling died quite suddenly of some heart trouble, and Mrs. Ward could not get it out of her head that his last illness was brought about by his disappointment and grief in not being able to go and sit quietly under the linden-trees after his day’s work and listen to a band. “You know, my dear,” she said, “when you get accustomed to a thing, it’s _bad_ for you to leave it off.” When poor Mr. Stelling died, Mrs. Frow Stelling was heart-broken, and I have reason to believe that Mrs. Ward went in and wept with her, and in their dumb way they forged the chains of some desperate understanding. When Mrs. Frow Stelling went back to Germany they promised to write to each other. But they never did, and for a very good reason. As Mrs. Ward said, she was “no scholard,” and as for Mrs. Frow Stelling, her English was such a doubtful quantity, she probably never got beyond addressing the envelope. “That was three years ago,” said Mrs. Ward. “Them boys must be eighteen and nineteen now.” III If I have intruded too greatly into the intimacy of Mrs. Ward’s life, one of my excuses must be—not that I am “a scholard” but that I am in any case able to read a simple English letter. I was in fact on several occasions “requisitioned.” When Lily was not at home, some one had to read Ernie’s letters out loud. The arrival of Ernie’s letters was always an inspiring experience. I should perhaps be in the garden with Mrs. Ward, when Tom would come hurrying out to the back, and call out: “Mother! a letter from Ernie!” And then there would be such excitement and commotion. The first thing was always the hunt for Mrs. Ward’s spectacles. They were never where she had put them. Tom would keep on turning the letter over in his hands, and examining the postmark, and he would reiterate: “Well, what did you do with them, mother?”