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“I suppose you never knew it,” she said to us, “for I took pains not to let it disturb you, but that child has notes in her voice about two stories higher than any operer prymer donner that I ever heard, an’ I’ve heard lots of ’em, for I used to go into the top gallery of the operer as often as into the theayter; an’ if any operer singer ever heard them high notes of Corinne’s,–an’ there was times when she’d let ’em out without the least bit of a notice,–it’s them that’s took her.”

“But, my poor Pomona,” said Euphemia, “you don’t suppose that little child could be of any use to an opera singer; at least, not for years and years.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” replied Pomona; “she was none too little. Sopranners is like mocking-birds; they’ve got to be took young.”

No arguments could shake Pomona’s belief in this theory. And she daily lamented the fact that there was no opera in London at that time that she might go to the performances, and see if there was any one on the stage who looked mean enough to steal a child.

“If she was there,” said Pomona, “I’d know it. She’d feel the scorn of a mother’s eye on her, an’ her guilty heart would make her forget her part.”

Pomona frequently went into Kensington Gardens, and laid traps for opera singers who might be sojourning in London. She would take Little Kensington into the gardens, and, placing her carefully in the corner of a bench, would retire to a short distance and pretend to be absorbed in a book, while her sharp eyes kept up the watch for a long-haired tenor, or a beautifully dressed soprano, who should suddenly rush out from the bushes and seize the child.

“I wouldn’t make no fuss if they was to come out,” she said. “Little Kensington would go under my arm, not theirn, an’ I’d walk calmly with ’em to their home. Then I’d say: ‘Give me my child, an’ take yourn, which, though she probably hasn’t got no voice, is a lot too good for you; and may the house hurl stools at you the next time you appear, is the limit of a mother’s curse.'”

But, alas for Pomona, no opera singers ever showed themselves.

These days of our stay in London were not pleasant. We went about little, and enjoyed nothing. At last Pomona came to us, her face pale but determined.

“It’s no use,” she said, “for us to keep you here no longer, when I know you’ve got through with the place, and want to go on, an’ we’ll go, too, for I don’t believe my child’s in London. She’s been took away, an’ we might as well look for her in one place as another. The perlice tells us that if she’s found here, they’ll know it fust, an’ they’ll telegraph to us wherever we is; an’ if it wasn’t fur nuthin’ else, it would be a mercy to git Jone out of this place. He goes about like a cat after her drowned kittens. It’s a-bringin’ out them chills of hisn, an’ the next thing it’ll kill him. I can’t make him believe in the findin’ of Corinne as firm as I do, but I know as long as Perkins’s Indelible Dab holds out (an’ there’s no rubbin’ nor washin’ it off) I’ll git my child.”

I admitted, but not with Pomona’s hopefulness, that the child might be found as easily in Paris as here.

“And we’ve seen everything about London,” said Euphemia, “except Windsor Castle. I did want, and still want, to see just how the Queen keeps house, and perhaps get some ideas which might be useful; but Her Majesty is away now, and, although they say that’s the time to go there, it is not the time for me. You’ll not find me going about inspecting domestic arrangements when the lady of the house is away.”