UT it wasn't Robbie. The diningroom window was the first to make the discovery. Being on the ground-floor, it gazes across the pavement under the trees and sees many things after nightfall which are missed by the upper storeys. The first and second time that something unusual happened I was not told; not until the third time was I taken into the secret. The dining-room window does most of the watching for the entire house; it sees so much that it has learnt to be discreet.

It was Armistice night when the unusual happening first occurred. London had gone mad with relief from suspense. Wherever a barrel-organ could be found people were dancing. Where more suitable music was not available, tin-cans were being beaten with a dervish, rhythmic monotony. Dance the people must. Their joy had gone into their feet; they could not convince themselves that peace had come till they had danced themselves to a standstill. They invented impromptu steps, dancing twenty abreast in the open spaces, humming any tune that caught their fancy, with their arms linked in those of strangers. But there were no strangers that night; everyone was a friend. Top-hats, evening-dress, corduroys and privates' uniforms hobnobbed together. A mighty roar of laughter and singing went up from thousands of miles of streets, dim-lit and dusk-drenched to ward off the ancient peril from the air. How suddenly unmodern peril had become! All London laughed; all England; all the world. The sound reached the Arctic; polar bears lumbered farther northward, stampeded by the strum of our guffaws. If there were inhabitants on Mars, they must have heard. The war was won. The news was so incredible that we had to make a noise to silence our doubts.

Everything that could rejoice was out under the stars making merry. We had hidden so long, walked so stealthily, wept so quietly, hated so violently that our right to be happy was almost too terrible to bear. We expressed our joy foolishly, hysterically, inadequately by shouting, embracing, climbing lamp-posts, riding on the roofs of taxis. What did it matter so long as we expressed it and brought the amazing truth home to ourselves? The last cannon had roared. The final man had died in battle. The wicked waste of white human bodies was ended. There would be no more rushing for the morning papers and searching the casualty lists with dread; no more rumours of invasions; no more musterings for new offensives. The men whom we loved were safe; they had been reprieved at the eleventh hour. We should have them home presently, seated by their firesides. It seemed like the fulfilment of a prophet's ecstasy; as though sorrow and crying had passed away and forever there would be no death.

There were two people who did not dance, climb lamp-posts, beat tin-cans and ride on the roofs of taxis that night. Perhaps they were the only two in London; they were both in Dolls' House Square. The little lady was one. She had tucked Joan and Robbie safely in their beds. She had kissed them “Good-night” and turned the gas on the landing to a jet. She had gone part way down the narrow stairs and then... and then she had come back. She had picked up Joan and carried her into Robbie's room. When the two heads were lying close together on the pillow, she had seated herself in the darkness beside them.

The little boy stretched up his arms to pull her down; she resisted. His hands wandered over her face and reached her eyes. They were wet. His heart missed a beat. He knew what that meant. So often in the dark, dark night he had wakened with the sure sense that she was crying and had tiptoed down the creaking stairs to creep in beside her and place his small arms tightly about her.

“Never mind; you have me, Mummy.” That was what he always said. He whispered it now.

“Yes, I have my wee man.”

“And me, Mummy,” Joan murmured sleepily.

“Mummy knows. She has you both. Don't worry about her. She's feeling silly tonight.”

“Because you're happy?” Joan questioned.

“Yes, happy for so many little boys and girls whose soldier daddies will be coming back to them soon. Don't talk any more. Go sleepy-bye.”

But Robbie knew that it wasn't happiness that made her cry; he knew that she was crying because she had no soldier to come back. What could he say to comfort her? His eyes grew drowsy while he thought about it. He waited till Joan was in Sleepy-bye Land, then with an effort he opened his eyes.

“Mummy, do you know what I'd like best for Christmas?”

“I thought you were sleeping. Don't tell me now. There's heaps of time. It's six weeks till Christmas.”

“But Joan and I have talked about it,” he persisted. “We don't want him, if you don't want him.”

“What is he, dear? If he doesn't cost too much, you shall have him.”

Robbie procrastinated now that he had brought his mother to the point of listening. It was a delicate proposal that he was about to make. “I don't know whether you can get one,” he hesitated. “A boy at my school got one without asking, and it wasn't even Christmas.”

He was sitting up in bed now, very intense and serious, and very much awake.

“But you've not told me yet what it is you want. If you don't tell me, I can't say whether I can afford it.”

She slipped her arm about the square little body and feeling how it trembled, held it close against her breast. He hid his face in the hollow of her neck. “Robbie's place,” she whispered. “If it's difficult to say, whisper it to mother there.”

His lips moved several times before a sound came and then, “If it isn't too much trouble, we should like to have a Daddy.”

Against his will she held him back from her, trying to see his eyes. “But why?”

It was he who was crying now. “Oh Mummy, I didn't mean to hurt you.... To be like all the other little boys and girls.” When at last he was truly asleep and she had come down to the lamp-lit room in which she sewed, she did not take up her work. The parrot tried to draw her into conversation with his eternal question, “What shall we talk about?”

“Nothing tonight, Polly,” she said. Presently she crossed the room and, pulling back the curtains, stood staring out into the blackness. So her children had felt it, too—the weight of loneliness! She had tried so hard to prevent them from sharing it; had striven in so many ways to be their companion. Try as she would, she could never make up for a father's absence. She could never give them the sense of security that a man could have given without effort, even though he had loved them less. It was a bitter realisation—one which vaguely she had always dreaded must come to her. It was doubly bitter coming to her now, on a night when all the world was glad. She might be many things to her children; she could never be a man.... What did Robbie think? That you bought a father from an agency or engaged him through an advertisement? She smiled sadly, “Not so easy as that.”

“What shall we talk about?” asked the parrot.

She drew the curtains together, extinguished the lights and groped her way up to bed.

But her eyes had not peered far enough into the blackness. There was another person in London who had not danced or climbed lamp-posts or ridden on the roofs of taxis that night. For three hours he had watched the little house from the shadow of the trees across the road. From the pavement, had you been passing, you would hardly have distinguished him as he leant against the garden-railings. The only time he gave a sign of his presence was when the red flare of his cigarette betrayed him. He did not seem to be planning harm to anyone; he could not have done much harm in any case, for the left sleeve of his coat hung empty. He was simply waiting for something that he hoped might happen. At last his patience was rewarded when she drew aside the curtain and stood with the lighted room behind her, staring out into the blackness. Only when she had again hidden herself and all the house was in darkness, did he turn to go. He was there the next night and the next. It was after his third night of watching that the dining-room window told me.