Barbara. "Do you wish all the knobs changed?"

"Please."

Without another word, the young man knelt at the door by which he had
entered and began with the aid of a long screw-driver to remove its
ancient lock of japanned iron and coarse white china.

"What's the best news with you, Harry?"

The young man did not look up from his work. "That the water'll soon be
warm enough for swimming," he said.

To Barbara that answer seemed pleasantly indicative of a healthy nature
and a healthy mind.

"It's a curious thing," observed the beggar, "how many more people drown
themselves when the water is nice and warm than when it is cold and
inhospitable. And yet it's in the cold months that the most people
receive visits from despair."

Bubbles looked up, wondering. In his experience the legless beggar had
no manner of language different from that of the streets to which he
belonged. But now he spoke as Miss Barbara spoke, only, perhaps we may
be permitted so to express it, very much more so.

Barbara turned to the beggar. "I haven't paid you."

But he retreated in smiling protest, picked up his hand-organ, and slung
it across his shoulders. "The door, Bubbles."