Nevertheless, one day something would surely happen.
The house was full of company, and the boy would, sometimes, have yielded to the Fear that was never far away, had it not been for some one whom he had known from the very beginning of everything, some one who was as real as his mother, some one who was more powerful than anything or any one in the house, and kinder, far, far kinder.
Often when Mrs.Slater would wonder of what her son was thinking as he sat twisting string round and round in front of the fire, he would be aware of his Friend in the shadow of the light, watching gravely, in the cheerful room, having beneath his hands all the powers, good and evil, of the house.

Just as Henry pictured quite clearly to himself other occupants of the house--some one with taloned claws behind the piano, another with black-hooded eyes and a peaked cap in the shadows of an upstairs passage, another brown, shrivelled and naked, who dwelt in a cupboard in one of the empty bedrooms so, too, he could see his Friend, vast and shadowy, with a flowing beard and eyes that were kind and shining.
Often he had felt the pressure of his hand, had heard his reassuring whisper in his ears, had known the touch of his lips upon his forehead.
No harm could come to him whilst his Friend was in the house--and his Friend was always there.
He went always with his mother into the streets when she did her shopping or simply took the air.

It was natural that on these occasions, he should be more frightened than during his hours in the house.

In the first place his Friend did not accompany him on these out-of-door excursions, and his mother was not nearly so strong a protector as his Friend.
Then he was disturbed by the people who pressed and pushed about him--he had a sense that they were all like birds with flapping wings and strange cries, rushing down upon him--the colours and confusion of the shops bewildered him.

There was too much here for him properly to understand; he had enough to do with the piano, the mirror, the shadowed passages, the staring windows.
But in the Square he was happy again.