"Why, women--that they can tell one baby from another, without its clothes. I've got a sister, a monthly nurse, and she will tell you for a fact, if you care to ask her, that up to three months of age there isn't really any difference between 'em. You can tell a girl from a boy and a Christian child from a black heathen, perhaps; but to fancy you can put your finger on an unclothed infant and say: 'That's a Smith, or that's a Jones,' as the case may be--why, it's sheer nonsense. Take the things off 'em, and shake them up in a blanket, and I'll bet you what you like that which is which you'd never be able to tell again so long as you lived."

I agreed with Henry, so far as my own personal powers of discrimination might be concerned, but I suggested that to Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith there would surely occur some means of identification.

"So they'd tell you themselves, no doubt," replied Henry; "and of course, I am not thinking of cases where the child might have a mole or a squint, as might come in useful. But take 'em in general, kids are as much alike as sardines of the same age would be. Anyhow, I knew a case where a fool of a young nurse mixed up two children at an hotel, and to this day neither of those women is sure that she's got her own."

"Do you mean," I said, "there was no possible means of distinguishing?"

"There wasn't a flea-bite to go by," answered Henry. "They had the same b.u.mps, the same pimples, the same scratches; they were the same age to within three days; they weighed the same to an ounce; and they measured the same to an inch. One father was tall and fair, and the other was short and dark. The tall, fair man had a dark, short wife; and the short, dark man had married a tall, fair woman. For a week they changed those kids to and fro a dozen times a day, and cried and quarrelled over them. Each woman felt sure she was the mother of the one that was crowing at the moment, and when it yelled she was positive it was no child of hers. They thought they would trust to the instinct of the children. Neither child, so long as it wasn't hungry, appeared to care a curse for anybody; and when it was hungry it always wanted the mother that the other kid had got. They decided, in the end, to leave it to time. It's three years ago now, and possibly enough some likeness to the parents will develop that will settle the question. All I say is, up to three months old you can't tell 'em, I don't care who says you can."

He paused, and appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of the distant Matterhorn, then clad in its rosy robe of evening. There was a vein of poetry in Henry, not uncommon among cooks and waiters. The perpetual atmosphere of hot food I am inclined to think favourable to the growth of the softer emotions. One of the most sentimental men I ever knew kept a ham-and-beef shop just off the Farringdon Road. In the early morning he could be shrewd and business-like, but when hovering with a knife and fork above the mingled steam of bubbling sausages and hissing peas-pudding, any whimpering tramp with any impossible tale of woe could impose upon him easily.

"But the rummiest go I ever recollect in connection with a baby,"

continued Henry after a while, his gaze still fixed upon the distant snow- crowned peaks, "happened to me at Warwick in the Jubilee year. I'll never forget that."

"Is it a proper story," I asked, "a story fit for me to hear?"

On consideration, Henry saw no harm in it, and told it to me accordingly.

He came by the 'bus that meets the 4.52. He'd a handbag and a sort of hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. He wouldn't let the Boots touch the hamper, but carried it up into his bedroom himself. He carried it in front of him by the handles, and grazed his knuckles at every second step. He slipped going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked his head a rattling good thump against the bal.u.s.trade; but he never let go that hamper--only swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous and excited, but one gets used to nervous and excited people in hotels.

Whether a man's running away from a thing, or running after a thing, he stops at a hotel on his way; and so long as he looks as if he could pay his bill one doesn't trouble much about him. But this man interested me: he was so uncommonly young and innocent-looking. Besides, it was a dull hole of a place after the sort of jobs I'd been used to; and when you've been doing nothing for three months but waiting on commercial gents as are having an exceptionally bad season, and spoony couples with guide- books, you get a bit depressed, and welcome any incident, however slight, that promises to be out of the common.

I followed him up into his room, and asked him if I could do anything for him. He flopped the hamper on the bed with a sigh of relief, took off his hat, wiped his head with his handkerchief, and then turned to answer me.

"Are you a married man?" says he.

It was an odd question to put to a waiter, but coming from a gent there was nothing to be alarmed about.

"Well, not exactly," I says--I was only engaged at that time, and that not to my wife, if you understand what I mean--"but I know a good deal about it," I says, "and if it's a matter of advice--"

"It isn't that," he answers, interrupting me; "but I don't want you to laugh at me. I thought if you were a married man you would be able to understand the thing better. Have you got an intelligent woman in the house?"

"We've got women," I says. "As to their intelligence, that's a matter of opinion; they're the average sort of women. Shall I call the chambermaid?"

"Ah, do," he says. "Wait a minute," he says; "we'll open it first."

He began to fumble with the cord, then he suddenly lets go and begins to chuckle to himself.

"No," he says, "you open it. Open it carefully; it will surprise you."

I don't take much stock in surprises myself. My experience is that they're mostly unpleasant.

"What's in it?" I says.

"You'll see if you open it," he says: "it won't hurt you." And off he goes again, chuckling to himself.

"Well," I says to myself, "I hope you're a harmless specimen." Then an idea struck me, and I stopped with the knot in my fingers.

"It ain't a corpse," I says, "is it?"

He turned as white as the sheet on the bed, and clutched the mantlepiece.

"Good G.o.d! don't suggest such a thing," he says; "I never thought of that. Open it quickly."

"I'd rather you came and opened it yourself, sir," I says. I was beginning not to half like the business.

"I can't," he says, "after that suggestion of yours--you've put me all in a tremble. Open it quick, man; tell me it's all right."

Well, my own curiosity helped me. I cut the cord, threw open the lid, and looked in. He kept his eyes turned away, as if he were frightened to look for himself.

"Is it all right?" he says. "Is it alive?"

"It's about as alive," I says, "as anybody'll ever want it to be, I should say."

"Is it breathing all right?" he says.

"If you can't hear it breathing," I says, "I'm afraid you're deaf."

You might have heard its breathing outside in the street. He listened, and even he was satisfied.

"Thank Heaven!" he says, and down he plumped in the easy-chair by the fireplace. "You know, I never thought of that," he goes on. "He's been shut up in that basket for over an hour, and if by any chance he'd managed to get his head entangled in the clothes--I'll never do such a fool's trick again!"

"You're fond of it?" I says.

He looked round at me. "Fond of it," he repeats. "Why, I'm his father."

And then he begins to laugh again.

"Oh!" I says. "Then I presume I have the pleasure of addressing Mr.

Coster King?"

"Coster King?" he answers in surprise. "My name's Milberry."

I says: "The father of this child, according to the label inside the cover, is Coster King out of Starlight, his mother being Jenny Deans out of Darby the Devil."

He looks at me in a nervous fashion, and puts the chair between us. It was evidently his turn to think as how I was mad. Satisfying himself, I suppose, that at all events I wasn't dangerous, he crept closer till he could get a look inside the basket. I never heard a man give such an unearthly yell in all my life. He stood on one side of the bed and I on the other. The dog, awakened by the noise, sat up and grinned, first at one of us and then at the other. I took it to be a bull-pup of about nine months old, and a fine specimen for its age.

"My child!" he shrieks, with his eyes starting out of his head, "That thing isn't my child. What's happened? Am I going mad?"

"You're on that way," I says, and so he was. "Calm yourself," I says; "what did you expect to see?"

"My child," he shrieks again; "my only child--my baby!"

"Do you mean a real child?" I says, "a human child?" Some folks have such a silly way of talking about their dogs--you never can tell.

"Of course I do," he says; "the prettiest child you ever saw in all your life, just thirteen weeks old on Sunday. He cut his first tooth yesterday."

The sight of the dog's face seemed to madden him. He flung himself upon the basket, and would, I believe, have strangled the poor beast if I hadn't interposed between them.

"'Tain't the dog's fault," I says; "I daresay he's as sick about the whole business as you are. He's lost, too. Somebody's been having a lark with you. They've took your baby out and put this in--that is, if there ever was a baby there."