But, bless you, then and now he was as solid as a rock.
Looking back again, it seems to me, as if Them Two brought me and Cheevers luck, from the very beginning, for before they was twelve years old, as near as I can guess, in spite of the call on us, that an extra two in family must ever make, me and Cheevers had extended the premises by taking the opposite room on the ground floor, and was paying a neighbour, as owned a shed in a backyard for stabling of a donkey.
That was a rise in the world for us, our getting that donkey! It dropped upon us, as one might say, from the skies, ’Ampstead ’Eath being so much above the level of Lemon’s-passage.
For Nick and Nan were wonderful fond of ’Ampstead ’Eath, and would make nothing of trudging all the way there of a holiday, with a calico net to catch tittlebashes in, an’ a medicine bottle to put ’em in, when caught they were.
I’d give ’em a good slice of bread-an’-dripping each, an’ could trust ’em to be away the whole day without drowning themselves, though nothing more or less, when they did come back, but a mask of mud.
I have heard of strange things being discovered on ’Ampstead ’Eath in unexpected places, but that in a lonely part, where there are sandpits and blackberry bushes, and the grass grows short and thin, being sat upon so much by picnickers on Bank Holidays, a first-class perambulator should be found, with a stout, well-dressed baby sittin’ up inside it, sucking its thumb, come upon me as a startler.
“We looked all round,” said Nick, “but not a speck of a livin’ soul was there to be seen. If any lady had come along, Nan would ha’ run up to her and asked her: ‘O please ’m, did you happen to lose a ‘baby?’”
“But we saw nobody, for a fog had come on, and all the people, out walkin’ on the ’Eath, had gone home. An’ somehow, we never thought of handin’ the perambulator over to a policeman; the most nat’ral thing seemed to be, to wheel it straight to you.
“Nobody noticed us, till we got into the Passage, and then Old Cutties, as keeps the whelk-stall, sings out: ‘’Ullo, Nick! I never knowed you was a family man!’ and some more on ’em come round and wanted to have a look at the baby. But we wouldn’t allow no larks. And now, here it is, an’ what are we goin’ to do with it?”
“Feed it fust,” says Cheevers, as the baby, after staring at each of us in turn, opened its blessed mouth in a hungry roar. “Give it some bread and milk, and then lay information at the police station.