"Why, bless yer, if it wasn't for them little 'uns them policemen would have no one to collar; they daren't lay a finger on a man of your build, old pal."
This remark, from another member of the crowd, produced a laugh. The original speaker was a diminutive specimen of his kind, whom the policeman could have carried in his arms with the greatest of ease.
When they regained Piccadilly they came upon the victim of the robbery. This was a portly, middle-aged female, who was a pleasant combination of mackintoshes and agitation. She was the centre of an interested circle, into whose sympathetic ears she was pouring her tale of woe. The arrival of the policeman with his captive created a diversion.
"Is this the boy?" inquired the constable.
"Have you got my purse?" replied the lady. "It contained thirty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings, and threepence, in two ten pound notes, two fives,--I've got the numbers in my purse,--seven pounds in gold, four of them half-sovereigns, fifteen shillings in silver, and a threepenny bit; and whatever I shall do without it I don't know. I'm the landlady of the 'Rising Sun,' and I was going to pay my wine-merchant's bill, and I said to my daughter only this morning, 'Take all that money loose I didn't ought to do. No, Mary Ann, a cheque it ought to be.' But Mary Ann's that flighty, though she's in her thirties, though twenty-two she tries to pass herself to be----"
The policeman endeavoured to stop the lady's flood of eloquence.
"You can tell us all that when we get to the station. You'll have to come with me to identify the purse and charge the boy."
"I don't want to charge the boy, all I want is to identify the purse. As for the young limb of a boy, I'd like to give him a good banging with my unbrella, that I would!"
The lady shook her umbrella at the boy in a way which caused the crowd to laugh. But there was no laughter left in Bertie.
"We can't have any banging here," said the policeman, who was anxious to get on. "If you take my advice, you'll call a cab and let us all go comfortably together."