The city and the children faded away and he awoke to find himself in bed, but the sobbing was still in his ears. Though wide awake, he heard it distinctly; and he remembered that Geoffrey slept on the floor below, while this sound of a child’s sorrow descended from above. He sat up and struck a match. Instantly the sobbing ceased.

Mr Winburn did not tell his daughter of the dream or its sequel. That it was no trick of his imagination, he was convinced; indeed soon afterwards he heard it again in the day time. The wind was howling in the chimney but this was a separate sound—distinct, unmistakable; pitiful little heart-broken sobs.

He found out too, that he was not the only one to hear them. He overheard the housemaid saying to the parlour maid that she ‘didn’t think as that there nurse was kind to Master Geoffrey, she’d ’eard ’im crying ’is little ’eart out only that very morning.’ Geoffrey had come down to breakfast and lunch beaming with health and happiness; and Mr Winburn knew that it was not Geoff who had been crying, but that other child whose dragging footsteps had startled him more than once.

Mrs Lancaster alone never heard anything. Her ears were not perhaps attuned to catch sounds from another world.

Yet one day she also received a shock.

‘Mummy,’ said Geoff plaintively. ‘I wish you’d let me play with that little boy.’

Mrs Lancaster looked up from her writing-table with a smile.

‘What little boy, dear?’

‘I don’t know his name. He was in an attic, sitting on the floor crying, but he ran away when he saw me. I suppose he was shy (with slight contempt), not like a big boy, and then, when I was in the nursery building, I saw him standing in the door watching me build, and he looked so awful lonely and as though he wanted to play wiv me. I said: “Come and build a h’engine,” but he didn’t say nothing, just looked as—as though he saw a lot of chocolates, and his Mummy had told him not to touch them.’ Geoff sighed, sad personal reminiscences evidently recurring to him. ‘But when I asked Jane who he was and told her I wanted to play wiv him, she said there wasn’t no little boy in the ’ouse and not to tell naughty stories. I don’t love Jane at all.’

Mrs Lancaster got up.

‘Jane was right. There was no little boy.’

‘But I saw him. Oh! Mummy, do let me play wiv him, he did look so awful lonely and unhappy. I do want to do something to “make him better”.’

Mrs Lancaster was about to speak again, but her father shook his head.

‘Geoff,’ he said very gently, ‘that poor little boy is lonely, and perhaps you may do something to comfort him; but you must find out how by yourself—like a puzzle—do you see?’

‘Is it because I am getting big I must do it all my lone?’