"What do you mean?" he says.

"Well, sir," I says, "if you'll excuse me, gentlemen in their sober senses don't take their babies about in dog-baskets. Where do you come from?"

"From Banbury," he says; "I'm well known in Banbury."

"I can quite believe it," I says; "you're the sort of young man that would be known anywhere."

"I'm Mr. Milberry," he says, "the grocer, in the High Street."

"Then what are you doing here with this dog?" I says.

"Don't irritate me," he answers. "I tell you I don't know myself. My wife's stopping here at Warwick, nursing her mother, and in every letter she's written home for the last fortnight she's said, 'Oh, how I do long to see Eric! If only I could see Eric for a moment!'"

"A very motherly sentiment," I says, "which does her credit."

"So this afternoon," continues he, "it being early-closing day, I thought I'd bring the child here, so that she might see it, and see that it was all right. She can't leave her mother for more than about an hour, and I can't go up to the house, because the old lady doesn't like me, and I excite her. I wish to wait here, and Milly--that's my wife--was to come to me when she could get away. I meant this to be a surprise to her."

"And I guess," I says, "it will be the biggest one you have ever given her."

"Don't try to be funny about it," he says; "I'm not altogether myself, and I may do you an injury."

He was right. It wasn't a subject for joking, though it had its humorous side.

"But why," I says, "put it in a dog-basket?"

"It isn't a dog-basket," he answers irritably; "it's a picnic hamper. At the last moment I found I hadn't got the face to carry the child in my arms: I thought of what the street-boys would call out after me. He's a rare one to sleep, and I thought if I made him comfortable in that he couldn't hurt, just for so short a journey. I took it in the carriage with me, and carried it on my knees; I haven't let it out of my hands a blessed moment. It's witchcraft, that's what it is. I shall believe in the devil after this."

"Don't be ridiculous," I says, "there's some explanation; it only wants finding. You are sure this is the identical hamper you packed the child in?"

He was calmer now. He leant over and examined it carefully. "It looks like it," he says; "but I can't swear to it."

"You tell me," I says, "you never let it go out of your hands. Now think."

"No," he says, "it's been on my knees all the time."

"But that's nonsense," I says; "unless you packed the dog yourself in mistake for your baby. Now think it over quietly. I'm not your wife, I'm only trying to help you. I shan't say anything even if you did take your eyes off the thing for a minute."

He thought again, and a light broke over his face. "By Jove!" he says, "you're right. I did put it down for a moment on the platform at Banbury while I bought a 't.i.t-Bits.'"

"There you are," I says; "now you're talking sense. And wait a minute; isn't to-morrow the first day of the Birmingham Dog Show?"

"I believe you're right," he says.

"Now we're getting warm," I says. "By a coincidence this dog was being taken to Birmingham, packed in a hamper exactly similar to the one you put your baby in. You've got this man's bull-pup, he's got your baby; and I wouldn't like to say off-hand at this moment which of you's feeling the madder. As likely as not, he thinks you've done it on purpose."

He leant his head against the bed-post and groaned. "Milly may be here at any moment," says he, "and I'll have to tell her the baby's been sent by mistake to a Dog Show! I daresn't do it," he says, "I daresn't do it."

"Go on to Birmingham," I says, "and try and find it. You can catch the quarter to six and be back here before eight."

"Come with me," he says; "you're a good man, come with me. I ain't fit to go by myself."

He was right; he'd have got run over outside the door, the state he was in then.

"Well," I says, "if the guv'nor don't object--"

"Oh! he won't, he can't," cries the young fellow, wringing his hands.

"Tell him it's a matter of a life's happiness. Tell him--"

"I'll tell him it's a matter of half sovereign extra on to the bill," I says. "That'll more likely do the trick."

And so it did, with the result that in another twenty minutes me and young Milberry and the bull-pup in its hamper were in a third-cla.s.s carriage on our way to Birmingham. Then the difficulties of the chase began to occur to me. Suppose by luck I was right; suppose the pup was booked for the Birmingham Dog Show; and suppose by a bit more luck a gent with a hamper answering description had been noticed getting out of the 5.13 train; then where were we? We might have to interview every cabman in the town. As likely as not, by the time we did find the kid, it wouldn't be worth the trouble of unpacking. Still, it wasn't my cue to blab my thoughts. The father, poor fellow, was feeling, I take it, just about as bad as he wanted to feel. My business was to put hope into him; so when he asked me for about the twentieth time if I thought as he would ever see his child alive again, I snapped him up shortish.

"Don't you fret yourself about that," I says. "You'll see a good deal of that child before you've done with it. Babies ain't the sort of things as gets lost easily. It's only on the stage that folks ever have any particular use for other people's children. I've known some bad characters in my time, but I'd have trusted the worst of 'em with a wagon- load of other people's kids. Don't you flatter yourself you're going to lose it! Whoever's got it, you take it from me, his idea is to do the honest thing, and never rest till he's succeeded in returning it to the rightful owner."

Well, my talking like that cheered him, and when we reached Birmingham he was easier. We tackled the station-master, and he tackled all the porters who could have been about the platform when the 5.13 came in. All of 'em agreed that no gent got out of that train carrying a hamper. The station-master was a family man himself, and when we explained the case to him he sympathised and telegraphed to Banbury. The booking-clerk at Banbury remembered only three gents booking by that particular train. One had been Mr. Jessop, the corn-chandler; the second was a stranger, who had booked to Wolverhampton; and the third had been young Milberry himself. The business began to look hopeless, when one of Smith's newsboys, who was hanging around, struck in:

"I see an old lady," says he, "hovering about outside the station, and a- hailing cabs, and she had a hamper with her as was as like that one there as two peas."

I thought young Milberry would have fallen upon the boy's neck and kissed him. With the boy to help us, we started among the cabmen. Old ladies with dog-baskets ain't so difficult to trace. She had gone to a small second-rate hotel in the Aston Road. I heard all particulars from the chambermaid, and the old girl seems to have had as bad a time in her way as my gent had in his. They couldn't get the hamper into the cab, it had to go on the top. The old lady was very worried, as it was raining at the time, and she made the cabman cover it with his ap.r.o.n. Getting it off the cab they dropped the whole thing in the road; that woke the child up, and it began to cry.

"Good Lord, Ma'am! what is it?" asks the chambermaid, "a baby?"

"Yes, my dear, it's my baby," answers the old lady, who seems to have been a cheerful sort of old soul--leastways, she was cheerful up to then.

"Poor dear, I hope they haven't hurt him."

The old lady had ordered a room with a fire in it. The Boots took the hamper up, and laid it on the hearthrug. The old lady said she and the chambermaid would see to it, and turned him out. By this time, according to the girl's account, it was roaring like a steam-siren.

"Pretty dear!" says the old lady, fumbling with the cord, "don't cry; mother's opening it as fast as she can." Then she turns to the chambermaid--"If you open my bag," says she, "you will find a bottle of milk and some dog-biscuits."

"Dog-biscuits!" says the chambermaid.

"Yes," says the old lady, laughing, "my baby loves dog-biscuits."

The girl opened the bag, and there, sure enough, was a bottle of milk and half a dozen Spratt's biscuits. She had her back to the old lady, when she heard a sort of a groan and a thud as made her turn round. The old lady was lying stretched dead on the hearthrug--so the chambermaid thought. The kid was sitting up in the hamper yelling the roof off. In her excitement, not knowing what she was doing, she handed it a biscuit, which it s.n.a.t.c.hed at greedily and began sucking.

Then she set to work to slap the old lady back to life again. In about a minute the poor old soul opened her eyes and looked round. The baby was quiet now, gnawing the dog-biscuit. The old lady looked at the child, then turned and hid her face against the chambermaid's bosom.

"What is it?" she says, speaking in an awed voice. "The thing in the hamper?"

"It's a baby, Ma'am," says the maid.

"You're sure it ain't a dog?" says the old lady. "Look again."

The girl began to feel nervous, and to wish that she wasn't alone with the old lady.

"I ain't likely to mistake a dog for a baby, Ma'am," says the girl. "It's a child--a human infant."

The old lady began to cry softly. "It's a judgment on me," she says. "I used to talk to that dog as if it had been a Christian, and now this thing has happened as a punishment."