PREFACE
Of the eleven stories in this book, seven now appear for the first time. For permission to reprint “Sir Franklin and the Little Mothers,” I have to thank Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew & Co.; and Messrs. George Allen & Sons allow me to include “The Miss Bannisters’ Brother.” “The Monkey’s Revenge” was printed first in Messrs. Dent’s Christmas Treasury, and “The Anti-burglars” in The Woman at Home for December 1902. The motive of the title story was given to me by Mrs. Charles Bryant, and that of “The Ring of Fortitude” by Mrs. W. M. Meredith. The suggestion as to organs and street cries in “The Notice-Board” was made to me by Oxford’s Professor of Poetry. The autobiographies of coins, I might add, are a commonplace in old books for children; but one is at liberty, I think, to adapt the idea to one’s own time without being guilty of very serious want of originality.
E. V. L.