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Updated: June 9, 2025
"To Tottie Bones!" said Miss Lillycrop, with an excited movement that ground some of her bonnet to straw-powder. Miss Stivergill did not raise her eyes or whistle at this. She merely put her head a little on one side and smiled. "I knew it, my dear at least I felt sure it would come to this, though it is sooner than I expected.
Bones looked with admiration at his deliverer, but could only find words to repeat that she was a trump, and vanished through the back-door, just as a band of men, with pitchforks, rakes, spades, and lanterns, came clamouring in at the front garden gate from the neighbouring farm. "What is it?" exclaimed the farmer. "Only a burglar," answered Miss Stivergill. "Where is he?" chorussed everybody.
Tottie being summoned with the baby, entered the room staggering with the rotund mountain of good-natured self-will entirely concealing her person, with exception of her feet and the pretty little coal-dusted arms with which she clasped it to her heaving breast. "Ha! I suppose little Bones is behind it," said Miss Stivergill. "Set the baby down, child, and let me see you." Tottie obeyed.
Sitting alone in the breakfast parlour of The Rosebud, one morning in June, Miss Stivergill read the following paragraph in her newspaper: "GALLANT RESCUE. Yesterday forenoon a lady and her daughter, accompanied by a gentleman, went to the landing-wharf at Blackfriars with the intention of going on board a steamer.
Little Pax, who had discreetly kept out of range of the burglar's eye, went with them, a good deal depressed in spirit, for his mission had failed. The burglary had not indeed, been accomplished, but "father" was "took." When Miss Stivergill was left alone with the burglar she gazed at him for some time in silence. "Man," she said at length, "you are little Bones's father."
"Where, and when, and why did you find that child?" asked Miss Stivergill. Her friend related what she knew of Tottie's history. "Strange!" remarked Miss Stivergill, but beyond that remark she gave no indication of the state of her mind.
At the same moment she seized the tea-tray in her left hand and belaboured it furiously with the drumstick. "Ring out at the window!" shouted Miss Stivergill. Miss Lillycrop did so until her spinal marrow thawed. The noise was worse than appalling. Little Pax, unable to express his conflicting emotions in any other way, yelled with agonising delight.
"Did you hear THAT, dear?" she asked, in a low whisper. "Of course I did," replied Miss Stivergill aloud. "Hush! listen." They listened and heard "that" again. There could be no doubt about it a curious scratching sound at the dining-room window immediately below theirs. "Rats," said Miss Stivergill in a low voice. "Oh! I do hope so," whispered Miss Lillycrop.
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