I have four milk-boys as pets. They don't know it, but I cultivate an intimate knowledge of their habits and study them as, once, years ago, I was wont to study white mice and goldfish. I have watched their development, listened to their song, and have made several interesting discoveries about them.

When, after a hard evening's reading, perhaps, I jot down a few notes and tumble into bed at 1 A.M., I do so with the delightful certainty that at 6.30 the first of my pets will rouse me with his mellow warbling. He (Number One) looks always on the bright side of things and probably belongs to a club for incurable optimists, for he intersperses his roulades with cheery spells of whistling. Should Number Two, who is a pal of his, loom through the early morning mist with the lark and the first motor-bus at the other end of the Terrace, no false modesty deters him from making himself known; he gives a view-halloo that startles every drooping cat in the district. He informs Number Two, while that person is yet nebulous, a mere blur on the cosmos, that he went to the local Empire last night, and that it was a bit of all right. With an intermittent rumble he elicits the information that Geor-r-rge (that's Number Two's name) went to his local Palace and had a treat of a beano. And when they meet—exactly opposite my dwelling is the favoured spot—the Can-can is performed with variations. Jolly fellows are One and Two.

As for Number Three, I could tell you a little story about him. He has had a love-affair. There was a time when he too joined in the dance and song, as one might say; but all that is over for him. One morning he turned up late, his usual merry call changed to a croak like that of a bull-frog virtuoso. I peered between the curtains to make sure that it was not Number Five (as yet hypothetical); but no—it was Three, with a look on his face that could only bear one interpretation. Belinda had been perverse, unkind, icy—had, in fact, thrown him over. You could read it in the angle of his cap, in the broken lace dragging from his boots, in his shuffling progress, and in the dulled gleam of his brass-mounted cans. From that date he became a frowning pessimist, perpetrating wheezes and squeaks and mumblings, quaverings and hoarse murmurs, instead of the customary sportive yelp. 'Tis an unkind world, according to Number Three.

Number Four generally arrives as the lingering chatter of his predecessors dies away. He is rotund, judging by his voice (I have not yet seen him); also I should say that he goes in for physical culture. For, by the sounds that ascend to my window, his procedure is as follows: he unhooks the empty can from the railings of the opposite house and dashes it violently upward against the wall, catching it on the rebound. This action he repeats a few times just to get into form; it is, as it were, a muscular prelude. Then, taking seven or eight empty tins from his trolley, he juggles with them, not very expertly, for some of them break away into neighbouring areas and have to be retrieved; or he will set the whole lot in the road and kick them round for five minutes, brilliantly and wonderfully. This warms him. Picking them up, he spends a relatively quiet interlude in sorting out the one he wants, then fills it, bangs the lid down, and rehangs it in position. Having repeated the process with the remainder, he glows with a sense of duty done, and bursts into his farewell song; I often wish that it was his swan-song. He produces in this vocal valediction noises which to the ears of a Futurist composer might seem as Olympian music, but which to my insufficiently educated taste are merely excruciating.

These, then are my four pets. I value them, for they teach me self-denial and self-restraint; they rouse me at an hour when I might otherwise be lost in slothful sleep; and they assure me that there is a sphere in which taxes and politics really do not matter in the slightest. Some day, I suppose, they will grow up. What will become of their talents in the world of men it is beyond me to imagine. But Number Four seems to have the makings of a politician.