There was quite an excitement in the neighbourhood when the empty house was let.  It was rumoured that the newcomer was a Personage.  She was the President of the Society of Ancient Souls.  The Society of Ancient Souls was a society of people who remembered their previous existence.  The memory usually came in a flash.  For instance, you might remember in a flash when you were looking at a box of matches that you had been Guy Fawkes.  Or you might look at a cow and remember in a flash that you had been Nebuchadnezzar.  Then you joined the Society of Ancient Souls, and paid a large subscription, and attended meetings at the house of its President in costume.  And the President was coming to live next door to William.  By a curious coincidence her name was Gregoria—­Miss Gregoria Mush.  William awaited her coming with anxiety.  He had discovered that one’s next-door neighbours make a great difference to one’s life.  They may be agreeable and not object to mouth organs and whistling and occasional stone-throwing, or they may not.  They sometimes—­the worst kind—­go to the length of writing notes to one’s father about one, and then, of course, the only course left to one is one of Revenge.  But William hoped great things from Miss Gregoria Mush.  There was a friendly sound about the name.  On the evening of her arrival he climbed up on the roller and gazed wistfully over the fence at the territory that had once been his, but from which he was now debarred.  He felt like Moses surveying the Promised Land.

Miss Gregoria Mush was walking in the garden.  William watched her with bated breath.  She was very long, and very thin, and very angular, and she was reading poetry out loud to herself as she trailed about in her long draperies.

“‘Oh, moon of my delight....’” she declaimed, then her eye met William’s.  The eyes beneath her pince-nez were like little gimlets.

“How dare you stare at me, you rude boy?” she said.

William gasped.

[Illustration:  “HOW DARE YOU STARE AT ME, YOU RUDE BOY?” SHE SAID.]

“I shall write to your father,” she said fiercely, and then proceeded still ferociously, “‘... that knows no wane.’”

“Crumbs!” murmured William, descending slowly from his perch.

She did write to his father, and that note was the first of many.  She objected to his singing, she objected to his shouting, she objected to his watching her over the wall, and she objected to his throwing sticks at her cat.  She objected both verbally and in writing.  This persecution was only partly compensated for by occasional glimpses of meetings of the Ancient Souls.  For the Ancient Souls met in costume, and sometimes William could squeeze through the hole in the fence and watch the Ancient Souls meeting in the dining-room.  Miss Gregoria Mush arrayed as Mary, Queen of Scots (one of her many previous existences) was worth watching.  And always there was the garden on the other side.  Mr. Gregorius Lambkin made no objections and wrote no notes.  But clouds of Fate were gathering round Mr. Gregorius Lambkin.  William first heard of it one day at lunch.