THE LION AND THE UNICORN

Prentiss had a long lease on the house, and because it stood in
Jermyn Street the upper floors were, as a matter of course,
turned into lodgings for single gentlemen; and because Prentiss
was a Florist to the Queen, he placed a lion and unicorn over his
flowershop, just in front of the middle window on the first
floor. By stretching a little, each of them could see into the
window just beyond him, and could hear all that was said inside;
and such things as they saw and heard during the reign of Captain
Carrington, who moved in at the same time they did! By day the
table in the centre of the room was covered with maps, and the
Captain sat with a box of pins, with different-colored flags
wrapped around them, and amused himself by sticking them in the
maps and measuring the spaces in between, swearing meanwhile to
himself. It was a selfish amusement, but it appeared to be the
Captain's only intellectual pursuit, for at night, the maps were
rolled up, and a green cloth was spread across the table, and
there was much company and popping of soda-bottles, and little
heaps of gold and silver were moved this way and that across the
cloth. The smoke drifted out of the open windows, and the
laughter of the Captain's guests rang out loudly in the empty
street, so that the policeman halted and raised his eyes
reprovingly to the lighted windows, and cabmen drew up beneath
them and lay in wait, dozing on their folded arms, for the
Captain's guests to depart. The Lion and the Unicorn were rather
ashamed of the scandal of it, and they were glad when, one day,
the Captain went away with his tin boxes and gun-cases piled high
on a four-wheeler.