FullReads

“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 circumstance of brutality and unpleasantness, the victim being one of our schoolfellows whom we neither of us loved.

Then for a chapter or two there was some very active police play, interspersed with a few love scenes between the hero and heroine, who– though it never occurred to us at the time–must have enjoyed independent means, which made it quite unnecessary for them to follow the ordinary avocations of organ-grinders.

About the thirty-fifth chapter there was to be a sudden drawing-in of threads from all quarters.

Sub-Chapter thirty-sixth was to be devoted to Sarah in the condemned cell.

Thirty-seventh–Alicia discovers her name by seeing it marked on a pocket-handkerchief she had been using at the time she was stolen.

Sub-Chapter thirty-eighth–The hero discovers his name by being told it by a solicitor who has known all about it all the time.

Sub-Chapter thirty-ninth–All comes right; everybody goes back to their mothers and fathers, and a quiet wedding ensues.

Sub-Chapter forty–Execution of Sarah. Finis.

We were tired and hungry by the time our paper was full, but we were jubilant all the same.

“Stunning fine plot!” said Harry. “If we only work it out it ought to be as good as Nicholas Nickleby.”

“Rather! By the way, we ought to have one or two funny chaps in it to work off some of our jokes. There’s that one about the sculptor dying a horrid death, you know–because he makes faces and busts! I’d like to get that in somehow.”

“All serene! That might come in in the last chapters. I’ve got the Family Jest-Book at home; we might pick a few things out of that, and then settle where they come in, and work in for them as we go on.”

We accordingly made a judicious selection, and having marked the initials of the character who was to bring them in against each, and also the number of the chapter in which they were to “come on,” we really felt as if everything was now ready for our venture.

We went to bed early, so as to get a good night and arise fresh to our work, not, however, before we had made an expedition to the stationer’s and expended half a crown in manuscript paper, J and D pens, blotting- paper, blue-black ink, and forty small paper-fasteners.

These provided, and the servant being particularly charged to call us at five o’clock, we retired to rest, and slept with our “skeleton” under the pillow.