sometimes when I have taken a few winks in my place inside the coach and
have come half awake by the flashing light of the fire and have heard
that precious pet driving and the Major blowing up behind to have the
change of horses ready when we got to the Inn, I have half believed we
were on the old North Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to
see that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their
feet and going stamping about and having glasses of ale out of the paper
matchboxes on the chimney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as
much as the child I am very sure, and it's equal to any play when Coachee
opens the coach-door to look in at me inside and say "Wery 'past that
'tage.--'Prightened old lady?"

But what my inexpressible feelings were when we lost that child can only
be compared to the Major's which were not a shade better, through his
straying out at five years old and eleven o'clock in the forenoon and
never heard of by word or sign or deed till half-past nine at night, when
the Major had gone to the Editor of the _Times_ newspaper to put in an
advertisement, which came out next day four-and-twenty hours after he was
found, and which I mean always carefully to keep in my lavender drawer as
the first printed account of him. The more the day got on, the more I
got distracted and the Major too and both of us made worse by the
composed ways of the police though very civil and obliging and what I
must call their obstinacy in not entertaining the idea that he was
stolen. "We mostly find Mum" says the sergeant who came round to comfort
me, which he didn't at all and he had been one of the private constables
in Caroline's time to which he referred in his opening words when he said
"Don't give way to uneasiness in your mind Mum, it'll all come as right
as my nose did when I got the same barked by that young woman in your
second floor"--says this sergeant "we mostly find Mum as people ain't
over-anxious to have what I may call second-hand children. _You'll_ get