ehow 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.

The chambermaid said she wouldn't. The old lady sat down and tried to
think, and the more she thought the worse she felt. The chambermaid was
positive that if we hadn't come when we did the poor creature would have
gone mad. When the Boots appeared at the door to say there was a gent
and a bulldog downstairs enquiring after a baby, she flung her arms round
the man's neck and hugged him.

We just caught the train to Warwick, and by luck got back to the hotel
ten minutes before the mother turned up. Young Milberry carried the
child in his arms all the way. He said I could have the hamper for
myself, and gave me half-a-sovereign extra on the understanding that I
kept my mouth shut, which I did.

I don't think he ever told the child's mother what had
happened--leastways, if he wasn't a fool right through, he didn't.

THE PROBATION OF JAMES WRENCH.

"There are two sorts of men as gets hen-pecked," remarked Henry--I forgot
how the subject had originated, but we had been discussing the merits of
Henry VIII., considered as a father and a husband,--"the sort as likes it
and the sort as don't, and I wouldn't be too cocksure that the sort as
does isn't on the whole in the majority.

"You see," continued Henry argumentatively, "it gives, as it were, a kind
of interest to life which nowadays, with everything going smoothly, and
no chance of a row anywhere except in your own house, is apt to become a
bit monotonous. There was a chap I got to know pretty well one winter
when I was working in Dresden at the Europaischer Hof: a quiet, meek
little man he was, a journeyman butcher by trade; and his wife was a
dressmaker, a Schneiderin, as they call them over there, and ran a fairly
b