"Perhaps the servant took it down-stairs to clean it?"
"Not at all likely, sir. If you will please to remember, you told her last Monday evening—or, no, I beg pardon—last Tuesday morning, that your friends cleaned up their own dishes, and that their things was not to be touched."
"Perhaps you took it down-stairs then yourself, Mrs. Glutch, by mistake?"
"I, sir! I didn't. I couldn't. Why should I? I think you said a large pudding-basin, sir?"
"Yes, I did say so."
"I have ten large pudding-basins of my own, sir."
"I am very glad to hear it. Will you be so good as to look among them, and see if my friends' basin has not got mixed up with your crockery?"
Mrs. Glutch turns very red in the face, slowly scratches her muscular arms, as if she felt a sense of pugilistic irritation in them, looks at me steadily with a pair of glaring eyes, and leaves the room at the slowest possible pace. I wait and ring—wait and ring—wait and ring. After the third waiting and the third ringing, she reappears, redder of face and slower of march than before, with the missing article of property held out before her at arm's length.
"I beg pardon, sir," she says, "but is this anything like your friends' large pudding-basin?"
"That is the basin itself, Mrs. Glutch."