“You’re sure it ain’t a dog?” says the old lady. “Look again.”
The girl began to feel nervous, and to wish that she wasn’t alone with the old lady.
“I ain’t likely to mistake a dog for a baby, Ma’am,” says the girl. “It’s a child—a human infant.”
The old lady began to cry softly. “It’s a judgment on me,” she says. “I used to talk to that dog as if it had been a Christian, and now this thing has happened as a punishment.”
“What’s happened?” says the chambermaid, who was naturally enough growing more and more curious.
“I don’t know,” says the old lady, sitting up on the floor. “If this isn’t a dream, and if I ain’t mad, I started from my home at Farthinghoe, two hours ago, with a one-year-old bulldog packed in that hamper. You saw me open it; you see what’s inside it now.”
“But bulldogs,” says the chambermaid, “ain’t changed into babies by magic.”
“I don’t know how it’s done,” says the old lady, “and I don’t see that it matters. I know I started with a bulldog, and somehow or other it’s got turned into that.”
“Somebody’s put it there,” says the chambermaid; “somebody as wanted to get rid of a child. They’ve took your dog out and put that in its place.”
“They must have been precious smart,” says the old lady; “the hamper hasn’t been out of my sight for more than five minutes, when I went into the refreshment-room at Banbury for a cup of tea.”