gained for them by thus having actual names, like friends and playfellows.  This Thor’s-day was an especially great day for them; for, in the evening, when George had returned from business, and there was yet an hour to bedtime, they would come round him to hear one of the adventures of the great Thor—­adventures which he had already contrived, he laughingly told us, to go on spinning out of the Edda through no less than the Thursdays of two years.  Certainly his ingenuity of economy with his materials was no little marvel, and he confessed to often being at his wits’ end.  For Thursday night was not alone starred with stories; every night there was one to tell; sometimes an incident of his day in town, which he would dress up with the imaginative instinct of a born teller of fairy-tales.  He had a knack, too, of spreading one story over several days which would be invaluable to a serial writer.  I remember one simple instance of his device.

He sat in one of those great cane nursing chairs, Phyllis on one knee, Owen on the other, and Geoffrey perched in the hollow space in the back of the chair, leaning over his shoulder, all as solemn as a court awaiting judgment.  George begins with a preliminary glance behind at Geoffrey:  ’Happy there, my boy?  That’s right.  Well, there was once a beautiful garden.’

‘Yes-s-s-s,’ go the three solemn young heads.

‘And it was full of the most wonderful things.’

‘Yes-s-s-s.’

’Great trees, so green, for the birds to hide and sing in; and flowers so fair and sweet that the bees said that, in all their flying hither and thither, they had never yet found any so full of honey in all the world.  And the birds, too, what songs they knew; and the butterflies, were there ever any so bright and many-coloured?’ etc., etc.

’But the most wonderful thing about the garden was that everything in it had a wonderful story to tell.’

‘Yes-s-s s.’

’The birds, and bees, and butterflies, even the trees and flowers, each knew a wonderful fairy-tale.’

‘Oh-h-h-h.’

’But of all in the garden the grasshopper knew the most.  He had been a great traveller, for he had such long legs.’

Again a still deeper murmur of breathless interest.

‘Now, would you like to hear what the grasshopper had to tell?’

‘Oh, yes-s-s-s.’

‘Well, you shall—­to-morrow night!’

So off his knees they went, as he rose with a merry, loving laugh, and kissed away the long sighs of disappointment, and sent them to bed, agog for all the morrow’s night should reveal.

Need one say that the children were not the only disappointed listeners?  Besides, they have long since known all the wonderful tale, whereas one of the poorer grown-up still wonders wistfully what that grasshopper who was so great a traveller, and had such long legs, had to tell.