id that we must take her to the
seashore instantly. In half-an-hour we had caught a train for
Folkestone, which the baby's mother, remembering her sensations when
landing from the Boulogne boat after a rough passage, felt sure was "all
that there is of the most seashore," as the French idiom has it. It was
just about to rain when we reached Folkestone, and, putting the baby and
her attendant slaves in a carriage, I told them to drive at once to the
private hotel, which we had selected, and I would follow with the
luggage. It took some time to pile a mountain of boxes and bundles on
the top of the carriage, but, finally, just as the rain began to pour, a
self-sacrificing friend who had remained to help got into the cab with
me, and we told the driver to go to number 33, such-a-street. It was at
the furthest extremity of the town, and when we reached there, after two
or three attempts on the part of the top-heavy cab to upset, I was
greeted by the information that no such person as the landlady of whom I
was in search lived there. What was worse, nobody had ever heard of her,
and no cab containing a baby had called at the house that day. Where
then was the baby, and its mother, and my wife, and its other slaves?
Obviously, they were lost somewhere in the town of Folkestone, and our
two cabs might drive up and down for months without ever once meeting
one another. I looked at my companion, and he looked at me in silence.
No language could do justice to the occasion, and we both recognised the
fact. I told the cabman to go to all the hotels in the neighbourhood,
and enquire for a missing baby. He explained that there were nothing but
hotels and boarding-houses in Folkestone, and that to visit them all
would take the greater part of our lives; still, he would try. So we
went to at least a dozen different places, and, although twice a sample
of the resident babies was brought out for our inspection, we did not
find the one for which we were in search. Then the driver, seeing our
despair, said that perhaps he had better drive to the pier, and we said
that perhaps he had. I think he had a vague idea that we were lunatics,
and could possibly be lured on board the Boulogne boat, and so got rid
of. But he thought better of it before reaching the pier, and suggested
that if we went back to the station, perhaps the stationmaster might
help us. So we went back to the station, merely to be told by the
stationmaster that he knew nothing