"Right so far, then. But you see I can't go back unless I can take the kid home with me."
"Ay, that's clear enough," assented Phil.
"Well then, here's what I'm a-goin' to propose. Let's go back to them tramps, or gipsies, or whatever they are, and ask if they'll let us live with them for the present. They're kind people, and if we help them all we can, it'll go hard but we'll earn our board and lodgin'."
"Well?" said Phil, feeling that the most important of what Tad had set out to say, was unsaid as yet.
"Well," repeated Tad, "my idea was this, that we should stay on with them, movin' when and where they did, and livin' their life until—"
"Ah, I see what you mean!" cried Phil. "Until Sophie's daughter, Marie, came with the baby, and then—"
"Yes, that's it! Steal the baby again, and cut away," said Tad, "and trust to chance for gettin' across the Channel."
But Phil shook his head.
"No," said he firmly, "no more stealin' of babies, nor of nothin' else! It would be a wicked and ongrateful thing to do to them, as had been good to us, and beside I don't hold with bein' so secret and sly."
"But we want to get hold of the child," argued Tad, "and we can't get him onless we take him like that."