"But the rummiest go I ever recollect in connection with a baby,"
continued Henry after a while, his gaze still fixed upon the distant snow-
crowned peaks, "happened to me at Warwick in the Jubilee year. I'll
never forget that."

"Is it a proper story," I asked, "a story fit for me to hear?"

On consideration, Henry saw no harm in it, and told it to me accordingly.

* * * * *

He came by the 'bus that meets the 4.52. He'd a handbag and a sort of
hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. He wouldn't let the Boots
touch the hamper, but carried it up into his bedroom himself. He carried
it in front of him by the handles, and grazed his knuckles at every
second step. He slipped going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked
his head a rattling good thump against the balustrade; but he never let
go that hamper--only swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous
and excited, but one gets used to nervous and excited people in hotels.
Whether a man's running away from a thing, or running after a thing, he
stops at a hotel on his way; and so long as he looks as if he could pay
his bill one doesn't trouble much about him. But this man interested me:
he was so uncommonly young and innocent-looking. Besides, it was a dull
hole of a place after the sort of jobs I'd been used to; and when you've
been doing nothing for three months but waiting on commercial gents as
are having an exceptionally bad season, and spoony couples with guide-
books, you get a bit depressed, and welcome any incident, however slight,
that promises to be out of the common.

I followed him up into his room, and asked him if I could do anything for