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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-class carriage on our way to Birmingham. Then the difficulties of the chase began to occur to me.
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."
"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."
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.
When the Boots appeared at the door to say there was a gent and a bulldog downstairs enquiring after a baby, she flung her arms round the man's neck and hugged him. We just caught the train to Warwick, and by luck got back to the hotel ten minutes before the mother turned up. Young Milberry carried the child in his arms all the way.
"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.
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