power of invective was superb. When she was not in prison she
haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours. She patronised me
most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me;
she lived in comparative luxury when I provided lodgings for her;
she slept out of doors when I did not.

She bestowed her affections on me and made me heir to her non-
existent fortune; she proposed marriage to me, although she
frequently met and admired my good wife. All this and more, year
after year!

Poor old Jane! I owe much to her, and I am quite willing, nay,
anxious, to say that in a great measure Jane Cakebread was the
making of Thomas Holmes.

Years have passed since we laid Jane gently to rest, but she
comes back to me and dominates me whenever I mentally call my old
friends together. Her voice is the loudest, her speech the most
voluble, and her manner the most assertive of all my motley
friends. They are all gathering around me as I write. My friend
who teaches music by colour is here, my friend with his secret
invention that will dispense with steam and electricity is here
too; "Little Ebbs" the would-be policeman is here too; the prima
donna whose life was more than a tragedy, the architect with his
wonderful but never accepted designs, the broken artist with his
pictures, the educated but non-sober lady who could convert
plaster models into marble statuary are all with me. The
unspeakably degraded parson smoking cigarettes, his absence of
shirt hidden by a rusty cassock, lolls in my easy-chair; my
burglar friend who had "done" forty years and was still asking