the cabman. "You'll have troubles of your own one
day."

The urchins moved a few steps further, then halted again and were joined
by a slatternly woman and another boy.

"Got it!" cried Johnny, unable to suppress his delight as his hand
slipped through a fold. The lady with the baby, without precisely
knowing why, set up a shrill cheer. Johnny's delight died away; it
wasn't the pocket-hole. Short of taking the skirt off and turning it
inside out, it didn't seem to Johnny that he ever would find that pocket.

Then in that moment of despair he came across it accidentally. It was as
empty as the reticule!

"I am sorry," said Johnny to the cabman, "but I appear to have come out
without my purse."

The cabman said he had heard that tale before, and was making
preparations to descend. The crowd, now numbering eleven, looked
hopeful. It occurred to Johnny later that he might have offered his
umbrella to the cabman; at least it would have fetched the eighteenpence.
One thinks of these things afterwards. The only idea that occurred to
him at the moment was that of getting home.

"'Ere, 'old my 'orse a minute, one of yer," shouted the cabman.

Half a dozen willing hands seized the dozing steed and roused it into
madness.

"Hi! stop 'er!" roared the cabman.

"She's down!" shouted the excited crowd.

"Tripped over 'er skirt," explained the slatternly woman. "They do
'amper you."

"No, she's not. She's up again!" vociferated a delighted plumber, with a
sounding slap on his own leg. "Gor blimy, if she ain't a good 'un!"

Fortunately the Square was tolerably clear and Johnny a good runner.
Holding now his skirt and petticoat high in his left hand, Johnny moved
across the Square at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. A butcher's boy
sprang in front of him with arms held out to stop him. The thing that
for the next three months annoyed that butcher boy most was hearing
shouted out after him "Yah! who was knocked down and run over by a lidy?"
By the time Johnny reached the Strand, _via_ Clement's Inn, the hue and
cry was far behind. Johnny dropped his skirts and assumed a more girlish
pace. Through Bow Street and Long Acre he reached Great Queen Street in
safety. Upon his own doorstep he began to laugh. His afternoon's
experience had been amusing; still, on the whole, he wasn't sorry it was
over. One can have too much even of the best of jokes. Johnny rang the
bell.

The door opened. Johnny would have