“Who are you, and what do you want?” said a wide-gashed mouth, which, with a squat, flattened-out nose and two merry little twinkling eyes, completed this wonderful apparition.

The words were in themselves somewhat rude.  On paper I observe that they have an appearance almost truculent.  But spoken as the thing framed in the window-sill said them, they were equal to a song of Brudershaft and an episcopal benediction rolled in one.

“I am Hugo Gottfried of the Red Tower, come to see Master Gerard,” I replied.  “Who may you be that asks so boldly?”

“I’ll give you a stalk of rhubarb to suck if you can guess,” was the unexpected answer.

As I had never in my life seen anything in the least like the prodigy, it was clearly impossible for me to earn the tart succulence of the summer vegetable on such easy terms.

“I should say,” I replied, “if the guess savor not of insolence, that one might be forgiven for mistaking you for the Fool of the Family!”

The grin expanded till it wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head.  It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side.  Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of hairy thatch.

“Pinked in the white, first time—­no trial shot!” cried the object in the doorway, cheerily.  “I am the Fool of the Family.  But not the only one!”

At this moment something happened behind—­what, I could not make out for some time.  The head abruptly disappeared.  There was a noise as of floor-rugs being vigorously beaten, the door opened, and the most extraordinary figure was shot out into the street.  The head which I had seen certainly came first, but so lengthy a body followed that it seemed a vain thing to expect legs in addition.  Yet, finally, two appeared, each of which would have made a decent body of itself, and went whirling across the street till the whole monstrosity came violently into collision with the walls of the house opposite, which seemed to rock to its very foundations under the assault.

A decent serving-man, in a semi-doctorial livery of black cloth, with a large white collar laid far over his shoulders, and cuffs of the same upon his wrists, stood in the open doorway and smiled apologetically at the visitor.  He was rather red in the face and panted with his exertions.

“I ask your pardon, young sir,” he said.  “That fool, Jan Lubber Fiend, will ever be at his tricks.  ’Tis my young mistress that encourages him, more is the pity!  For poor serving-men are held responsible for his knavish on-goings.  Why, I had just set him cross-legged in the yard with a basket of pease to shell, seeing how he grows as much as a foot in the night—­or near by.  But so soon as my back is turned he will be forever answering the door and peeping out into the street to gather the mongrel boys about him.  ’Tis a most foul Lubber Fiend to keep about an honest house, plaguing decent folks withal!”