“Of all the damned silly tricks!” muttered Johnny to himself.
Two small boys and a girl carrying a baby paused, interested.
“Go away,” told them the cabman. “You’ll have troubles of your own one day.”
The urchins moved a few steps further, then halted again and were joined by a slatternly woman and another boy.
“Got it!” cried Johnny, unable to suppress his delight as his hand slipped through a fold. The lady with the baby, without precisely knowing why, set up a shrill cheer. Johnny’s delight died away; it wasn’t the pocket-hole. Short of taking the skirt off and turning it inside out, it didn’t seem to Johnny that he ever would find that pocket.
Then in that moment of despair he came across it accidentally. It was as empty as the reticule!
“I am sorry,” said Johnny to the cabman, “but I appear to have come out without my purse.”
The cabman said he had heard that tale before, and was making preparations to descend. The crowd, now numbering eleven, looked hopeful. It occurred to Johnny later that he might have offered his umbrella to the cabman; at least it would have fetched the eighteenpence. One thinks of these things afterwards. The only idea that occurred to him at the moment was that of getting home.
“’Ere, ’old my ’orse a minute, one of yer,” shouted the cabman.
Half a dozen willing hands seized the dozing steed and roused it into madness.