"Come with me," he says; "you're a good man, come with me. I ain't fit
to go by myself."

He was right; he'd have got run over outside the door, the state he was
in then.

"Well," I says, "if the guv'nor don't object--"

"Oh! he won't, he can't," cries the young fellow, wringing his hands.
"Tell him it's a matter of a life's happiness. Tell him--"

"I'll tell him it's a matter of half sovereign extra on to the bill," I
says. "That'll more likely do the trick."

And so it did, with the result that in another twenty minutes me and
young Milberry and the bull-pup in its hamper were in a third-class
carriage on our way to Birmingham. Then the difficulties of the chase
began to occur to me. Suppose by luck I was right; suppose the pup was
booked for the Birmingham Dog Show; and suppose by a bit more luck a gent
with a hamper answering description had been noticed getting out of the
5.13 train; then where were we? We might have to interview every cabman
in the town. As likely as not, by the time we did find the kid, it
wouldn't be worth the trouble of unpacking. Still, it wasn't my cue to
blab my thoughts. The father, poor fellow, was feeling, I take it, just
about as bad as he wanted to feel. My business was to put hope into him;
so when he asked me for about the twentieth time if I thought as he would
ever see his child alive again, I snapped him up shortish.

"Don't you fret yourself about that," I says. "You'll see a good deal of
that child before you've done with it. Babies ain't the sort of things