"Yes," says the old lady, laughing, "my baby loves dog-biscuits." The girl opened the bag, and there, sure enough, was a bottle of milk and half a dozen Spratt's biscuits. She had her back to the old lady, when she heard a sort of a groan and a thud as made her turn round. The old lady was lying stretched dead on the hearthrug--so the chambermaid thought. The kid was sitting up in the hamper yelling the roof off. In her excitement, not knowing what she was doing, she handed it a biscuit, which it snatched at greedily and began sucking. Then she set to work to slap the old lady back to life again. In about a minute the poor old soul opened her eyes and looked round. The baby was quiet now, gnawing the dog-biscuit. The old lady looked at the child, then turned and hid her face against the chambermaid's bosom. "What is it?" she says, speaking in an awed voice. "The thing in the hamper?" "It's a baby, Ma'am," says the maid. "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." "That's when they did it," says the chambermaid, "and a clever trick it was." The old lady suddenly grasped her position, and jumped up from the floor. "And a nice thing for me," she says. "An unmarried woman in a scandal- mongering village! This is awful!" "It's a fine-looking child," says the chambermaid. "Would you like it?" says the old lady.