The last time he was fetched to find a lost child, he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown,
And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted Mother and Father about Town.
Billy—where are you, Billy, I say? come Billy, come home, to your best of Mothers!
I’m scared when I think of them Cabroleys, they drive so, they’d run over their own Sisters and Brothers.
Or may be he’s stole by some chimbly sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not,
And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketch’d, and the chimbly’s red hot.
Oh I’d give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin’ eyes on his face.
For he’s my darlin of darlins, and if he don’t soon come back, you’ll see me drop stone dead on the place.
I only wish I’d got him safe in these two Motherly arms, and wouldn’t I hug him and kiss him!
Lauk! I never knew what a precious he was—but a child don’t not feel like a child till you miss him.