othes, and hang them to dry. Be off with you!"

"Let us stop a little--just to tell Gardener this one curious thing
about Dolly and the pig--and then we'll help you to take your clothes to
the orchard; we can carry your basket between us--we can, indeed."

That was the last thing the woman wished; for she knew the that the
children would be sure to see the mess on the gravel-walk--and they
were such inquisitive children--they noticed every thing. They would
want to know all about it, and how the bits of coal came there. It was
very a awkward position. But people who take other people's property
often do find themselves in awkward positions.

"Thank you, young gentlemen," said she, quite politely; "but indeed the
basket is too heavy for you. However, you may stop and gossip a little
longer with my old man. He likes it."

And, while they were shut up with Gardener in his bedroom, off she went,
carrying the basket on her head, and hung her clothes carefully out--the
big things on lines between the fruit trees, and the little things, such
as stockings and pocket handkerchiefs, stuck on the gooseberry-bushes,
or spread upon the clean green grass.

"Such a fine day as it is! they'll dry directly," said she, cheerfully,
to herself. "Plenty of sun, and not a breath of wind to blow them about.
I'll leave them for an hour or two, and come and fetch them in before it
grows dark. Then I shall get all my folding done by bedtime, and have a
clear day for ironing to-morrow."

But when she did fetch them in, having bundled them all together in the
dusk of the evening, never was such a sight as those clothes! They were
all twisted in the oddest way--the stockings turned inside out, with the
heels and toes tucked into the legs; the sleeves of the shirts tied
together in double knots, the pocket-handkerchiefs made into round
balls, so tight that if you had pelted a person with them they would
have given very hard blows indeed. And the whole looked as if, instead
of lying quietly on the grass and bushes, they had been dragged through
heaps of mud and then stamped upon, so that there was not a clean inch
upon them from end to end.

"What a horrid mess!" cried the Gardener's wife, who had been at first
very angry, and then very frightened. "But I know what it is; that nasty
Boxer has got loose again. It's he that has done it."

"Boxer wouldn't tie shirt-sleeves in double knots, or make balls of
pocket-handkerchiefs," Gardener was hea