“Ay, lost,” repeated Mrs Frog, with a look of equal significance.
“Bless me, how did you lose your child?” asked Sir Richard, in some surprise.
“Oh! sir, that often happens to us poor folk. We’re used to it,” said Mrs Frog, in a half bantering half bitter tone.
Sir Richard suddenly called to mind the fact—which had not before impressed him, though he had read and commented on it—that 11,835 children under ten years of age had been lost that year, (and it was no exceptional year, as police reports will show), in the streets of London, and that 23 of these children were never found.
He now beheld, as he imagined, one of the losers of the lost ones, and felt stricken.
“Well now,” said Giles to Mrs Frog, “let’s hear how you get along. What does your husband do?”
“He mostly does nothin’ but drink. Sometimes he sells little birds; sometimes he sells penny watches or boot-laces in Cheapside, an’ turns in a little that way, but it all goes to the grog-shop; none of it comes here. Then he has a mill now an’ again—”
“A mill?” said Sir Richard,—“is it a snuff or flour—”
“He’s a professional pugilist,” explained Giles.
“An’ he’s employed at a music-hall,” continued Mrs Frog, “to call out the songs an’ keep order. An’ Bobby always used to pick a few coppers by runnin’ messages, sellin’ matches, and odd jobs. But he’s knocked over now.”