“Is it breathing all right?” he says.

“If you can’t hear it breathing,” I says, “I’m afraid you’re deaf.”

You might have heard its breathing outside in the street.  He listened, and even he was satisfied.

“Thank Heaven!” he says, and down he plumped in the easy-chair by the fireplace.  “You know, I never thought of that,” he goes on.  “He’s been shut up in that basket for over an hour, and if by any chance he’d managed to get his head entangled in the clothes—­I’ll never do such a fool’s trick again!”

“You’re fond of it?” I says.

He looked round at me.  “Fond of it,” he repeats.  “Why, I’m his father.”  And then he begins to laugh again.

“Oh!” I says.  “Then I presume I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Coster King?”

“Coster King?” he answers in surprise.  “My name’s Milberry.”

I says:  “The father of this child, according to the label inside the cover, is Coster King out of Starlight, his mother being Jenny Deans out of Darby the Devil.”

He looks at me in a nervous fashion, and puts the chair between us.  It was evidently his turn to think as how I was mad.  Satisfying himself, I suppose, that at all events I wasn’t dangerous, he crept closer till he could get a look inside the basket.  I never heard a man give such an unearthly yell in all my life.  He stood on one side of the bed and I on the other.  The dog, awakened by the noise, sat up and grinned, first at one of us and then at the other.  I took it to be a bull-pup of about nine months old, and a fine specimen for its age.

“My child!” he shrieks, with his eyes starting out of his head, “That thing isn’t my child.  What’s happened?  Am I going mad?”

“You’re on that way,” I says, and so he was.  “Calm yourself,” I says; “what did you expect to see?”

“My child,” he shrieks again; “my only child—­my baby!”

“Do you mean a real child?” I says, “a human child?” Some folks have such a silly way of talking about their dogs—­you never can tell.

“Of course I do,” he says; “the prettiest child you ever saw in all your life, just thirteen weeks old on Sunday.  He cut his first tooth yesterday.”

The sight of the dog’s face seemed to madden him.  He flung himself upon the basket, and would, I believe, have strangled the poor beast if I hadn’t interposed between them.

“’Tain’t the dog’s fault,” I says; “I daresay he’s as sick about the whole business as you are.  He’s lost, too.  Somebody’s been having a lark with you.  They’ve took your baby out and put this in—­that is, if there ever was a baby there.”

“What do you mean?” he says.

“Well, sir,” I says, “if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen in their sober senses don’t take their babies about in dog-baskets.  Where do you come from?”

“From Banbury,” he says; “I’m well known in Banbury.”

“I can quite believe it,” I says; “you’re the sort of young man that would be known anywhere.”