By this time the cab had reached Berkeley Square again, and Sir Franklin returned to his books.
IV
The next few days were the busiest and most perplexing that Pembroke ever spent. He was in Clerkenwell, where the toy-shop was situated, from morning till night. He bought all kinds of things that he did not want—cheese and celery, mutton-chops and beer, butter and paraffin—just to get on terms with the people who know about the Little Mothers.
Although naturally rather silent and reserved, he talked to butchers and bakers and women on doorsteps, and schoolmistresses, and even hot-potato men, as if they were the best company in the world, and bit by bit he made a list of twenty-two Little Mothers of first-class merit, and fifty-one of second-class merit, and all their children.
Having got these down in his book, Pembroke was going home on the evening of the 21st very well pleased with himself on the whole, but still feeling that Sir Franklin would be disappointed not to have the name of the best Little Mother of all, when an odd thing happened. He had stopped in a doorway not very far from the toy-shop, to light his pipe, when he heard a shrill voice saying very decidedly, “Very well, then, William Kitchener Beacon, if that’s your determination you shall stay here all night, and by and by the rats will come out and bite you.”
Pembroke stood still and listened.
A LITTLE PROCESSION PASSED THE DOORWAY.
“I don’t want to go home,” a childish voice whimpered. “I want to look in the shops.”
“Come home you must and shall,” said the other. “Here’s Lucy tired out, and Amy crying, and John cold to his very marrer, and Tommy with a sawreel, and father’ll want his dinner, and mother’ll think we’re all run over by a motor-car; and come home you must and shall.”