“‘You saw me in jail, Bell? And what were you doing to see me?’
“Oh!’ grandly, ‘I was staying with the governor for the good of my ’ealth.’
“‘And hadn’t stealing a cow something to do with it, eh, Bell?’
“‘Yah. Who stole a watch?’
“‘A Jersey cow, eh, Bell?’
“Yah. What time is it, Mr. Lando?’
“‘Just about milking time, Bell, my friend.’
“It’s all very funny once, you know, Miles,” Bootles ended, disdainfully. “But when you’ve been to the circus half a dozen times you don’t see anything to laugh at, somehow.”
For grace’s sake Miles was obliged to laugh, for every one else roared, except Bootles, who went on speaking very gravely:
“I know it’s very amusing to make a joke of the affair, to say I know more about it than I will confess. I have told the colonel on my honor that the child is not mine, nor do I know whose it is. If it were mine I should not have made the story public property—it’s not in reason that I should. My difficulty is what to do with it. The colonel suggests the workhouse, Dawson the police-station—one simply means the other, and I can’t bring me to do it. It is an awful thing for the child of a tramp or a thief to be reared in a workhouse—and this is no common person’s child. For anything I know it may belong to one of you.”