ert?"

"Well you see, uncle, they had finished their bottle by the time we
got to Sevenoaks; and we all got down for dinner there and, before
we sat down, the man went to the bar and got it filled up again. A
pint of gin, filled up with water--I heard him order it. He put it
in the pocket of his coat, and hung the coat up on a peg when he
sat down to dinner.

"I was not long over my dinner, and finished before they did; and I
took the bottle out, and ran out to the yard and emptied it, and
filled it up with water, and put it back in the pocket again,
without his noticing it.

"You should have seen what a rage he was in, when he took his first
sip from the bottle, after we had started. He thought the man at
the inn had played him a trick, and he stood up and shouted to the
coachman to turn back again; but of course he wasn't going to do
that, and every one laughed--except the woman. I think she had had
more than was good for her, already, and she cried for about an
hour.

"The next two places where we changed horses, we did it so quick
that the man hadn't time to get down. The third place he did and,
though the guard said we shouldn't stop a minute, he went into the
public house. The guard shouted, but he didn't come out, and off we
went without him. Then he came out running, and waving his arms,
but the coachman wouldn't stop. The woman got down, with the child,
at the next place we changed horses; and I suppose they went on
next day and, if they started sober, they did perhaps get to Dover
all right."

"That was a very nasty trick," the woman, who was sitting next to
Bob, said sharply.

Bob had noticed that she had already opened a basket on her lap,
and had partaken of liquid refreshment.

"But you see, I saved the baby, ma'am," Bob said, humbly. "The
woman was sitting at the end and, if she had taken her share of the
second bottle, the chances are she would have dropped the baby. It
was a question of saving life, you see."

Bob felt a sudden convulsion in his uncle's figure.

"It is all very well to talk in that way," the woman said, angrily.
"It was just a piece of impudence, and you ought to have been
flogged for it. I have no patience with such impudent doings. A
wasting of good liquor, too."

"I don't think, madam," Mr. Bale said, "it was as much wasted as it
would have been, had they swallowed it; for at least it did no
harm. I cannot see myself why, because people get outside a coach,
they shoul