TO

LUCY BOSHER JANNEY




CHAPTER I

One of the advantages of being an unrequired person of twenty-six,
with an income sufficient for necessities, is the right of choice as
to a home locality. I am that sort of person, and, having exercised
said right, I am now living in Scarborough Square.

To my friends and relatives it is amazing, inexplicable, and beyond
understanding that I should wish to live here. I do not try to make
them understand; and therein lies grievance against me. Because of
my failure to explain what they are pleased to call a peculiar
decision on my part, I am at present the subject of heated criticism.
It will soon stop. What a person does or doesn't do is of little
importance to more than three or four people. By Christmas my
foolishness will have ceased to cause comment, ceased to interest
those to whom it doesn't matter really where or how I live.

I like living in Scarborough Square very much. After many years
spent in the homes of others I am now the head of half a house, the
whole of which is mine; and even though it is situated on the last
square of respectability in a part of the town long forgotten by the