n the morning! What a scene! The whistle of the workmen's
trains sounds, and the noise of vegetable carts going to Covent Garden
Market, give the place an animated appearance. Very few people are
awake, and those that are look sleepy.

"In such a scene as this a hideous-looking woman, about fifty years old,
with a long nose and a shabby barrel-organ, wended her way from some of
the slums near Farringdon Street Station in the direction of Euston
Square.

"It was not a very pretty walk. There were no birds twittering in the
trees, or cuckoos. You could not hear the gentle roar of the ocean, and
what flowers there were, were in pots on the window-sills.

"The ugly woman chose the road where there were most public-houses, and
I am sorry to say that any one who had walked close beside her would
have heard her talking to herself in very bad language."

Here followed the description of a few of the public-houses and their
natural beauties, and my narrative proceeded--

"In this way the wicked woman reached Euston Square. She was greatly
intoxicated, and not able to play the tunes on her organ correctly.
Nobody gave her anything, which was not surprising, and the police moved
her on all round the square.

"At last it was plain she would have to do something to get some money.

"After thinking over all the different things, she thought she would
steal a baby and get money that way. So, seeing a baby lying on a seat
close by, whose nurse had gone off to see a militia band marching
towards Gower Street, she stole it and went off as fast as she could.

"There was a cradle hanging on to the organ, and when people saw the
baby in it the wicked woman got as much money as she liked.

"My reader will have guessed by this time that the baby, which was of
the feminine gender, is the heroine.

"She was really high-born.

"Her father was a retired coal merchant. He was a very little man and
dropped his h's.

"Her mother was what the vulgar would call a `whopper.' Let not the
reader think she whopped her baby or her husband. On the contrary, she
was kind, but big.

"They lived at Highbury, and the nurse always took the baby out for
walks before breakfast."

It was at this point that it had suddenly flashed across me that I had
left out the joke allotted to Chapter One, and as the narrative was well
advanced, I ought to work up for it without delay. So I proceeded.

"We left Alicia, for that was the name of our he