"Do you mean," I said, "there was no possible means of distinguishing?"

"There wasn't a flea-bite to go by," answered Henry. "They had the same
bumps, the same pimples, the same scratches; they were the same age to
within three days; they weighed the same to an ounce; and they measured
the same to an inch. One father was tall and fair, and the other was
short and dark. The tall, fair man had a dark, short wife; and the
short, dark man had married a tall, fair woman. For a week they changed
those kids to and fro a dozen times a day, and cried and quarrelled over
them. Each woman felt sure she was the mother of the one that was
crowing at the moment, and when it yelled she was positive it was no
child of hers. They thought they would trust to the instinct of the
children. Neither child, so long as it wasn't hungry, appeared to care a
curse for anybody; and when it was hungry it always wanted the mother
that the other kid had got. They decided, in the end, to leave it to
time. It's three years ago now, and possibly enough some likeness to the
parents will develop that will settle the question. All I say is, up to
three months old you can't tell 'em, I don't care who says you can."

He paused, and appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of the distant
Matterhorn, then clad in its rosy robe of evening. There was a vein of
poetry in Henry, not uncommon among cooks and waiters. The perpetual
atmosphere of hot food I am inclined to think favourable to the growth of
the softer emotions. One of the most sentimental men I ever knew kept a
ham-and-beef shop just off the Farringdon Road. In the early morning he
could be shrewd and business-like, but when hovering with a knife and
fork above the mingled steam of bubbling sausages and hissing
peas-pudding, any whimpering tramp with any impossible tale of woe could
impose upon him easily.