“O but my dear good sir” I says clasping my hands and wringing them and clasping them again “he is such an uncommon child!” “Yes Mum” says the sergeant, “we mostly find that too Mum.  The question is what his clothes were worth.”  “His clothes” I says “were not worth much sir for he had only got his playing-dress on, but the dear child!—­” “All right Mum” says the sergeant.  “You’ll get him back Mum.  And even if he’d had his best clothes on, it wouldn’t come to worse than his being found wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf, a shivering in a lane.”  His words pierced my heart like daggers and daggers, and me and the Major ran in and out like wild things all day long till the Major returning from his interview with the Editor of the Times at night rushes into my little room hysterical and squeezes my hand and wipes his eyes and says “Joy joy—­officer in plain clothes came up on the steps as I was letting myself in—­compose your feelings—­Jemmy’s found.”  Consequently I fainted away and when I came to, embraced the legs of the officer in plain clothes who seemed to be taking a kind of a quiet inventory in his mind of the property in my little room with brown whiskers, and I says “Blessings on you sir where is the Darling!” and he says “In Kennington Station House.”  I was dropping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in cells with murderers when he adds “He followed the Monkey.”  I says deeming it slang language “O sir explain for a loving grandmother what Monkey!” He says “Him in the spangled cap with the strap under the chin, as won’t keep on—­him as sweeps the crossings on a round table and don’t want to draw his sabre more than he can help.”  Then I understood it all and most thankfully thanked him, and me and the Major and him drove over to Kennington and there we found our boy lying quite comfortable before a blazing fire having sweetly played himself to sleep upon a small accordion nothing like so big as a flat-iron which they had been so kind as to lend him for the purpose and which it appeared had been stopped upon a very young person.

My dear the system upon which the Major commenced and as I may say perfected Jemmy’s learning when he was so small that if the dear was on the other side of the table you had to look under it instead of over it to see him with his mother’s own bright hair in beautiful curls, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne and Lords and Commons and then might obtain some promotion for the Major which he well deserves and would be none the worse for (speaking between friends) L. S. D.-ically.  When the Major first undertook his learning he says to me: 

“I’m going Madam,” he says “to make our child a Calculating Boy.

“Major,” I says, “you terrify me and may do the pet a permanent injury you would never forgive yourself.”

“Madam,” says the Major, “next to my regret that when I had my boot-sponge in my hand, I didn’t choke that scoundrel with it—­on the spot—­”