Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1902-06-28 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NORTHERN WEEKLY GAZETTE.  UDEN,  nearly to his heeLs. When he regained the four-wheeler, the baby-farmer was still slumbering, Louisa sitting sentinel.  "I'm off now," she decided; "I must scoot back, or get the sack, without no wages. So-long and good luck, sir." And, nodding cheerfully, the little servant vanished in the gloom. Felix ordered the puzzled driver to proceed, and re-entered the cab. The old crone, huddled on the front seat, apparently slept. Felix permitted her to snore until theydrew towards the end of their journey. As they passed into Whitechapel-road, the quarter to midnight chimed out from an adjacent church-tower, and Felix, touching, with certain reluctance, the grimy form of his companion, wakened her by force.  She stiffened herself and stared wildly around—there was no doubt she had been genuinely in the arms of Morpheus. "Who are you ?" she faltered; " Pv• where am I?"  Her escort pointed out of the window. "I promised your friends to see you home," he answered; "as you may perceive, you are on the way thither." Mrs Dobson blinked at him. "You take a_mighty interest in me," she  snapped. For reply, Felix produced the sovereign he had uselessly offered to Louisa. He struck a vesta and held up both the light and the coin. The sunken eyes of the baby-farmer gleamed "This child you were given," he said; "it had reddish hair, had it not?"  The other snatched at the piece of money. "It had," she owned, with her cackling laugh; "but the red was dye—they couldn't trick me in that way. Ile-her A further golden coin was shown her in cme glow of a flaming Testa. "You got rid of the child to go abroad ?" he said; "now tell me exactly all the circumstances of that bargain and I will pay you five more of these." " He-he7-itivavered the old crone; "a fool and his money are soon parted. Well, if you'll buy, I'll sell!" The baby-farmer was interurpted by the halting of the cab they had attained their destination. Mrs Dobson tottered to her feet.  " Come in," she said, "and you shall learn what you want to know. And I'll not have you robbed or murdered, because you're a gentleman. I can hear it in your voice, the sort of voice I haven't heard for sixty years, when I was a pretty girl in the coetry and had many a soft word from the quality sparks." Felix dismissed the cab and followed the baby-farmer into her mean abode. She preceded him into the wretched kitchen and put a match to a candleend. Upon the visitor's face there burst the squalid horrors of the place, (lamp, foul floor, the filthy infants, drowsing in the heavy torpor of exhaustion the crawling vermin, the shattered panes that gaped to the autumn night. The shy - farmer stamped out the remains of the match and approached him unsteadily. "He - he," she said, "it's a queer tale, and worth the money. In all my old life I never saw the like. I was paid to hold my tongue, which was always providing I wasn't paid to wag it. So you shall be the wiser and I the richer. Ho-he!"  She rested a skinny hand on the back of a damaged chair and began to whisper. The candle-end spat and guttered and Felix Dering listened— amazedly.