Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/232

 needed, but he preferred to remain single-handed. The workshop door was never closed. All day, summer and winter, so long as Matthew was there working it remained wide open. At night Matthew slept there in a corner sheltered from the wind, and then it would be kept half-closed but so that any one who wished could enter. He would never answer questions as to this odd whim of his, and his neighbours had ceased thinking about it. They took a great fancy to one another, Matthew and the child. Old Mrs. Strong'nth'arm would sometimes leave him there, and his father would call for him on the way home. He had taken for his own the stool on which wandering Peter had many years ago carved the King of the Gnomes. And there he would sit by the hour swinging his little legs, discussing things in general with Matthew while he worked. At the child's request Anthony had bought the house and workshop so that Matthew might never fear being turned out.

There grew up in the child a strange liking for this dismal quarter, or rather three-quarters of the town of Millsborough that lay around Platt's Lane. Often, when his father called for him of an afternoon at Bruton Square he would plead for a walk in their direction before going home. He liked the moorland, too, with its bird life and its little creep-