be as Henry--Harry
explaining that "as they're to be kids together there won't be anything
strange in her calling him by his Christian name." The heroine, after
much searching of heart, we christened Alicia Dearlove, and the villain
Sarah Vixen.

The other names we made up from a local directory which we were lucky
enough to stumble across in the pavilion.

Then came the formidable work of slicing up our novel into forty pieces.
We wrote the figures down the side of a long sheet of paper, and looked
with something like dismay at the work we had set before us.

"Seems a lot of chapters," said Harry; "couldn't we make it thirty?"

"Wouldn't run to six shillings if we did," said I.

That settled it, and we set ourselves to fill up the blanks.

"Chapter the First," wrote I. "Theft of Alicia--Sorrow of her Parents--
The Organ-grinder's Lodgings--Suspicions of the Police--The Hero in the
Room underneath."

"Hold hard!" cried Harry; "that's too much for one chapter. We shall
have to make that do for four of 'em, or else we shall run out in ten."

"How on earth can you make four chapters of that?" said I.

"Well, you can make `Theft of Alicia' spin out into one."

"Oh, ah! Why, all there is to say is that Aunt Sarah--I mean Mother
Vixen--came across her in the square and collared her. However are you
to make a dozen pages of that?"

"Oh," said Harry, "we shall have to make her call at public-houses on
the way, and that sort of thing, and describe the scenery in the square,
and have the nursemaid go off to see the militia band go by, and leave
the baby on the seat. Bless you, it'll spread out!"

Harry seemed to know all about it.

So we went, on with our skeleton, trotting our little foundling round
town on the organ, where she witnessed with infant eyes street rows,
cricket matches, bicycle races, a murder or two, and such other little
incidents of life which we deemed calculated to enliven our story.

About the twelfth chapter she and our hero had already exchanged tender
passages.

In the twentieth chapter her real father and mother happen to see her in
the street (she being then sixteen), and are immediately struck by her
resemblance to their lost baby.

By chapter twenty-five our hero had saved the lives of his future mother
and father-in-law, and had rescued the heroine, single-handed, from a
Hatton Garden mob.

In the twenty-ninth chapter Aunt Sarah had committed her murder with
every circumsta