wn things
because I thought it would be cold. And then I emptied the rotten girl's
clothes out and hid them--and the top-hatted tray I just put it on a
chair near, and I got into the basket, and I lifted the tray up over my
head and sat down and fitted it down over me--it's got webbing bars, you
know, across it. And none of you would ever have thought of it, let
alone doing it."

"I should hope not," Dora said, but H.O. went on unhearing.

"I began to think perhaps I wished I hadn't directly they strapped up
the basket. It was beastly hot and stuffy--I had to cut an air-hole in
the cart, and I cut my thumb; it was so bumpety. And they threw me about
as if I was coals--and wrong way up as often as not. And the train was
awful wobbly, and I felt so sick, and if I'd had the grub I couldn't
have eaten it. I had a bottle of water. And that was all right till I
dropped the cork, and I couldn't find it in the dark till the water got
upset, and then I found the cork that minute.

"And when they dumped the basket on to the platform I was so glad to sit
still a minute without being jogged I nearly went to sleep. And then I
looked out, and the label was off, and lying close by. And then some one
gave the basket a kick--big brute, I'd like to kick him!--and said,
'What's this here?' And I daresay I did squeak--like a rabbit-noise, you
know--and then some one said, 'Sounds like live-stock, don't it? No
label.' And he was standing on the label all the time. I saw the string
sticking out under his nasty boot. And then they trundled me off
somewhere, on a wheelbarrow it felt like, and dumped me down again in a
dark place--and I couldn't see anything more."

"I wonder," said the thoughtful Oswald, "what made them think you were a
dynamite machine?"

"Oh, that was awful!" H.O. said. "It was my watch. I wound it up, just
for something to do. You know the row it makes since it was broken, and
I heard some one say, 'Shish! what's that?' and then, 'Sounds like an
infernal machine'--don't go shoving me, Dora, it was him said it, not
me--and then, 'If I was the inspector I'd dump it down in the river, so
I would. Any way, let's shift it.' But the other said, 'Let well alone,'
so I wasn't dumped any more. And they fetched another man, and there was
a heap of jaw, and I heard them say 'Police,' so I let them have it."

[Illustration: THEY LAUGHED EVER SO.]

"What _did_ you do?"

"Oh, I just kicked about in the basket, and I heard them a