HE little lady who needed to be loved, but did not know it, discovered me quite by accident. This story is a series of accidents; if it had not been for the ifs and the perhaps's and the possibilities there wouldn't have been any story to tell.

I was empty when she found me, for my late tenants had grown frightened and had moved into the country on account of airraids. They said that I was too near the giant searchlights and anti-aircraft guns of Hyde Park Corner to be healthy. If they weren't killed by bombs, sooner or later they would be struck by our own expended shell-cases that came toppling from two miles out of the clouds. So they had made their exit hurriedly in November, taking all their furniture and leaving me to spend my one-hundred-and-ninety-eighth Christmas in the company of a caretaker.

It was shortly before Christmas when I first saw her. Night had settled peacefully down; it was about nine o'clock when the maroons and sirens began to give warning that the enemy was approaching. In an instant, like a lamp extinguished, the lights of London flickered and sank. Down the forests of streets innumerable doors swiftly opened and people came pattering out. Dragging half-clad children by the hand and carrying babies snatched up from their warm beds, they commenced to run hither and thither, seeking the faint red lights of shelters, where cellars and overhead protection might be found. Policemen, mounted on bicycles, rode up and down the thoroughfares, blowing whistles. Ambulances dashed by, tooting horns and clanging bells. From far and near out of the swamp of darkness rose a medley of panic and sound. Prodding the sky, like detectives with lanterns, searchlights hunted and turned back the edges of the clouds. Then ominously, with solemn anger, the guns opened up and in fierce defiance the first bomb fell. The pattering of feet ceased suddenly. Streets grew forlorn and empty. The commotion of living and the terror of dying were transferred from the earth to the air.

I was standing deserted with my door wide open, for at the first signs of clamour the old woman, who was supposed to take care of me, had hobbled up from her basement and out on to the pavement in search of the nearest Tube Station. In her fear for her safety, she had forgotten to close my door, so there I stood with the damp air drifting into my hall, at the mercy of any chance vagrant.

The guns had been booming for perhaps five minutes when I heard running footsteps entering the square. Our square is so shut in and small that it echoes like a church; every sound is startling and can be heard in every part of it. I could not see to whom the footsteps belonged on account of the trees and the darkness. They entered on the side farthest from me, from the street where the red motor-buses pass. When they had reached the top, from which there is no exit, they hesitated; then came hurrying back along the side on which they would have to pass me. Tip-a-tap, tip-a-tap, tip-a-tap and panting breath—the sound of a woman's high-heeled shoes against the pavement. Accompanying the tip-a-tap were funny, more frequent, shuffling noises, indistinct and confused. Three shadows grew out of the gloom, a small one on either side and a bigger one in the centre; as they drew near they resolved themselves into a lady in an evening-wrap and two children.

I was more glad than I cared to own, for I'd been feeling lonely. Now that peace has come and we've won the war, I don't mind acknowledging that I'd been feeling frightened; at the time I wouldn't have confessed it for the world lest the Huns should have got to know it. We London houses, trying to live up to the example of our soldiers, always pretended that we liked the excitement of airraids. We didn't really; we quaked in all our bricks and mortar. One's foundations aren't what they were when one is a hundred-and-ninety-eight years old. So I'm not ashamed to tell you that I was delighted when the lady and her children came in my direction. I tried to push my front-door wider that they might guess that they were welcome. I was terribly nervous that they might pass in their haste without seeing that I was anxious to give them shelter. It was shelter that they were looking for. In coming into the square they had been seeking a shortcut home.

They drew level without slackening their steps and had almost gone by me when, less than a quarter of a mile away, a bomb crashed deafeningly. Everything seemed to reel. Far and near you could hear the tinkling of splintered glass. The world leapt up red for a handful of seconds as though the door of a gigantic furnace had been flung open. Against the glow you could see the crouching roofs of houses, the crooked chimney-pots and the net-work of trees in the garden with their branches stripped and bare. The lady clutched at my railings to steady herself. Her face was white and her eyes were dark with terror. The last bomb had been so very close that it seemed as though the next must fall in the square itself. One of the searchlights had spotted the enemy and was following his plane through the clouds, holding it in its glare.

“Mummy, it's all right. Don't be frightened. You've got me to take care of you.” It was the little boy speaking. Then he saw my To Let sign above and pointed, “We'll go in here till it's over. Look, the door's wide open.”

He tugged on her hand. With her arm about the shoulder of the little girl on the other side of her, she followed. The glow died down and faded. Soon the square was as secret and shadowy as it had been before—a tank full of darkness in which nothing stirred.