“Chapter the First,” wrote I. “Theft of Alicia—Sorrow of her Parents—The Organ-grinder’s Lodgings—Suspicions of the Police—The Hero in the Room underneath.”
“Hold hard!” cried Harry; “that’s too much for one chapter. We shall have to make that do for four of ’em, or else we shall run out in ten.”
“How on earth can you make four chapters of that?” said I.
“Well, you can make ‘Theft of Alicia’ spin out into one.”
“Oh, ah! Why, all there is to say is that Aunt Sarah—I mean Mother Vixen—came across her in the square and collared her. However are you to make a dozen pages of that?”
“Oh,” said Harry, “we shall have to make her call at public-houses on the way, and that sort of thing, and describe the scenery in the square, and have the nursemaid go off to see the militia band go by, and leave the baby on the seat. Bless you, it’ll spread out!”
Harry seemed to know all about it.
So we went, on with our skeleton, trotting our little foundling round town on the organ, where she witnessed with infant eyes street rows, cricket matches, bicycle races, a murder or two, and such other little incidents of life which we deemed calculated to enliven our story.
About the twelfth chapter she and our hero had already exchanged tender passages.
In the twentieth chapter her real father and mother happen to see her in the street (she being then sixteen), and are immediately struck by her resemblance to their lost baby.