"How's your dancing bear, Harkness ?" "How's the ghost you're befriending ?" "How's your coffin-gentleman ?" There was a laugh that rang loudly in the large, half-empty room.
After Harkness had despatched two morning visitors, however, and was looking out of his window, as was usual in his idle intervals, he noticed several errand-boys gazing up the road, and in a minute an advancing group came within his view, old Cameron walking down the middle of the street hitting the ground nervously with his staff, and behind him children of various sizes following rather timidly.

Every now and then the old man emitted some sound--a shout, a word of some sort, not easily understood.

It was this that had attracted the following of children, and was very quickly attracting the attention of every one in the street.

One or two men, and a woman with a shawl over her head, were coming down the sidewalks the same way and at about the same pace as the central group, and Harkness more than suspected that they had diverged from the proper course of their morning errands out of curiosity.

He took more interest in the scene than seemed consistent with his slight connection with the principal actor.