As we undressed that evening another point was cleared up.
“We can’t keep the hero hanging about sixteen years before we bring him in,” said Harry.
“Humph,” I observed, “unless we said ‘sixteen years passed’ at the end of the first chapter, and then we might get him in in the second.”
“It strikes me,” said Harry dubiously, “he ought to be in it all through. What do you say to making him another stolen baby belonging to another organ? Just as likely to have two stolen as one.”
It did occur to me that if it came to that, all the characters in the story might begin life in this romantic way. However, there seemed no objection to starting the hero in an organ-grinder’s cradle, and we closed with the suggestion at once and got into bed.
I woke very early. I had the hero on my mind. I wanted him to be a good one after the best model, and I could not help thinking that the Harry in him ought not to be overdone. Besides, if he was to make himself pleasant to the heroine, the less he was like Harry and the more he was like Harry’s chief friend the better. For sisters in fiction never make much of their brothers, but they often make a lot of their brothers’ friends.
I nudged Harry with my elbow, in order to represent the case to him from this point of view. I did it delicately and in a most conciliatory manner.
“I was thinking, old man, as Alice is the heroine and you’re her brother, I might—don’t you know—perhaps you’d like if—well, what I mean to say is, perhaps I’d better do the gush, when it comes to that.”
Happily Harry was scarcely awake, and did not take in all my meaning.
“All serene,” said he, “we’ll have as little of that as we can.”