The Day's Work

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Y SUNDAY AT HOME

population of England he had read so much about?
What was the rank of all those men on tricycles along
the roads? When were we due at Plymouth?

I told him all I knew, and very much that I did not.
He was going to Plymouth to assist in a consultation
upon a fellow-countryman who had retired to a place
called The Hoe — was that up-town or down- town? — to
recover from nervous dyspepsia. Yes, he himself was a
doctor by profession, and how any one in England could
retain any nervous disorder passed his comprehension.
Never had he dreamed of an atmosphere so soothing.
Even the deep rumble of London traffic was monastical
by comparison with some cities he could name ; and the
country — why, it was Paradise. A continuance of it, he
confessed, would drive him mad ; but for a few months
it was the most sumptuous rest-cure in his knowledge.

u I '11 come over every year after this," he said, in a
burst of delight, as we ran between two ten-foot hedges
of pink and white may. "It 's seeing all the things
I 've ever read about. Of course it does n't strike you
that way. I presume you belong here? What a fin-
ished land it is! It 's arrived. 'Must have been born
this way. Now, where I used to live — Hello ! what 's
up?"

The train stopped in a blaze of sunshine at Framlyng-
hame Admiral, which is made up entirely of the name-
board, two platforms, and an overhead bridge, without
even the usual siding. I had never known the slowest
of locals stop here before; but on Sunday all things are
possible to the London and Southwestern. One could
hear the drone of conversation along the carriages, and,
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

scarcely less loud, the drone of the bumblebees in the
wallflowers up the bank. My companion thrust his
head through the window and sniffed luxuriously.

" Where are we now? " said he.

"In Wiltshire," said I.

" Ah! A man ought to be able to write novels with
his left hand in a country like this. Well, well ! And
so this is about Tess's country, ain't it? I feel just as if
I were in a book. Say, the conduc— the guard has
something on his mind. What 's he getting at ? "

The splendid badged and belted guard was striding up
the platform at the regulation official pace, and in the
regulation official voice was saying at each door:

" Has any gentleman here a bottle of medicine ? A
gentleman has taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by
mistake. ' '

Between each five paces he looked at an official tele-
gram in his hand, refreshed his memory, and said his
say. The dreamy look on my companion's face— he
had gone far away with Tess— passed with the speed of
a snap-shutter. After the manner of his countrymen,
he had risen to the situation, jerked his bag down from
the overhead rail, opened it, and I heard the click of
bottles. " Find out where the man is," he said briefly.
" I 've got something here that will fix him— if he can
swallow still."

Swiftly I fled up the line of carriages in the wake of
the guard. There was clamour in a rear compartment
—the voice of one bellowing to be let out, and the feet
of one who kicked. With the tail of my eye I saw the
New York doctor hastening thither, bearing in his hand
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

a blue and brimming glass from the lavatory compart-
ment. The guard I found scratching his head unoffi-
cially, by the engine, and murmuring: " Well, I put a
bottle of medicine off at Andover— I 'm sure I did."

"Better say it again, any'ow," said the driver.
" Orders is orders. Say it again."

Once more the guard paced back, I, anxious to attract
his attention, trotting at his heels.

" In a minute— in a minute, sir," he said, waving an
arm capable of starting all the traffic on the London
and Southwestern Railway at a wave. * ' Has any
gentleman here got a bottle of medicine? A gentleman
has taken a bottle of poison (laudanum) by mistake."

" Where 's the man? " I gasped.

" Woking. 'Ere 's my orders." He showed me the
telegram, on which were the words to be said. " 'E must
have left 'is bottle in the train, an' took another by mis-
take. 'E 's been wirin' from Woking awful, an', now I
come to think of it, I 'm nearly sure I put a bottle of
medicine off at Andover. ' '

' ' Then the man that took the poison is n't in the
train?"

" Lord, no, sir. No one did n't take poison that way.
'E took it away with 'im, in 'is 'ands. 'E 's wirin'
from Wokin'. My orders was to ask everybody in the
train, and I 'ave, an' we 're four minutes late now. Are
you comin' on, sir? No? Right be'ind! "

There is nothing, unless, perhaps, the English lan-
guage, more terrible than the workings of an English
railway-line. An instant before it seemed as though we
were going to spend all eternity at Framlynghame
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

Admiral, and now I was watching the tail of the train
disappear round the curve of the cutting.

But I was not alone. On the one bench of the down
platform sat the largest navvy I have ever seen in my
life, softened and made affable (for he smiled generously)
with liquor. In his huge hands he nursed an empty
tumbler marked " L. S.W. K."— marked also, internally,
with streaks of blue-grey sediment. Before him, a hand
on his shoulder, stood the doctor, and as I came within
ear-shot, this is what I heard him say: "Just you hold
on to your patience for a minute or two longer, and
you '11 be as right as ever you were in your life. I 'tt
stay with you till you 're better."

" Lord! I 'm comfortable enough," said the navvy.
u Never felt better in my life."

Turning to me, the doctor lowered his voice. ' ' He
might have died while that fool conduct— guard was
saying his piece. I 've fixed him, though. The stuff 's
due in about five minutes, but there 's a heap to him.
I don't see how we can make him take exercise."

For the moment I felt as though seven pounds of
crushed ice had been neatly applied in the f erm of a com-
press to my lower stomach.

" How— how did you manage it? " I gasped.

" I asked him if he 'd have a drink. He was knock-
ing spots out of the car— strength of his constitution, I
suppose. He said he 'd go 'most anywhere for a drink,
so I lured on to the platform, and loaded him up. 'Cold-
blooded people, you Britishers are. That train 's gone,
and no one seemed to care a cent."

" We 've missed it," I said.
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

He looked at me curiously.

" We '11 get another before sundown, if that 's your
only trouble. Say, porter, when 's the next train
down?"

" Seven forty-five," said the one porter, and passed
out through the wicket-gate into the landscape. It was
then three-twenty of a hot and sleepy afternoon. The
station was absolutely deserted. The navvy had closed
his eyes, and now nodded.

" That 's bad," said the doctor. " The man, I mean,
not the train. We must make him walk somehow—
walk up and down."

Swiftly as might be, I explained the delicacy of the
situation, and the doctor from New York turned a full
bronze-green. Then he swore comprehensively at the
entire fabric of our glorious Constitution, cursing the
English language, root, branch, and paradigm, through
its most obscure derivatives. His coat and bag lay on
the bench next to the sleeper. Thither he edged cau-
tiously, and I saw treachery in his eye.

What devil of delay possessed him to slip on his spring
overcoat, I cannot tell. They say a slight noise rouses
a sleeper more surely than a heavy one, and scarcely
had the doctor settled himself in his sleeves than the
giant waked and seized that silk-faced collar in a hot
right hand. There was rage in his face— rage and the
realisation of new emotions.

" I 'm— I 'm not so comfortable as I were," he said
from the deeps of his interior. " You '11 wait along
o' me, you will." He breathed heavily through shut
lips.

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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

Now, if there was one thing more than another upon
which the doctor had dwelt in his conversation with
me, it was upon the essential law-abidingness, not to say
gentleness, of his much-misrepresented country. And
yet (truly, it may have been no more than a button that
irked him) I saw his hand travel backwards to his right
hip, clutch at something, and come away empty.

* ' He won't kill you, ' ' I said. * ' He '11 probably sue you
in court, if I know my own people. Better give him
some money from time to time. ' '

" If he keeps quiet till the stuff gets in its work," the
doctor answered, "I 'm all right. If he does n't ...
my name is Emory— Julian B. Emory— 193 'Steenth
Street, corner of Madison and—"

"I feel worse than I 've ever felt," said the navvy,
with suddenness. "What— did— you— give— me— the—
drink-for?"

The matter seemed to be so purely personal that I
withdrew to a strategic position on the overhead bridge,
and, abiding in the exact centre, looked on from afar.

I could see the white road that ran across the shoulder
of Salisbury Plain, unshaded for mile after mile, and a
dot in the middle distance, the back of the one porter
returning to Framlynghame Admiral, if such a place
existed, till seven forty-five. The bell of a church in-
visible clanked softly. There was a rustle in the horse-
chestnuts to the left of the line, and the sound of sheep
cropping close.

The peace of Nirvana lay upon the land, and, brooding
in it, my elbow on the warm iron girder of the foot-
bridge (it is a forty-shilling fine to cross by any other
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

means), I perceived, as never before, how the conse-
quences of our acts run eternal through time and through
space. If we impinge never so slightly upon the life of
a fellow-mortal, the touch of our personality, like the
ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens in
unending circles across the aeons, till the far-off Gods
themselves cannot say where action ceases. Also, it
was I who had silently set before the doctor the tumbler
of the first-class lavatory compartment now speeding
Plymouthward. Yet I was, in spirit at least, a million
leagues removed from that unhappy man of another
nationality, who had chosen to thrust an inexpert finger
into the workings of an alien life. The machinery was
dragging him up and down the sunlit platform. The
two men seemed to be learning polka-mazurkas together,
and the burden of their song, borne by one deep voice,
was: " What did you give me the drink for? "

I saw the flash of silver in the doctor's hand. The
navvy took it and pocketed it with his left ; but never
for an instant did his strong right leave the doctor's
coat-collar, and as the crisis approached, louder and
louder rose his bull-like roar: u What did you give me
the drink for?"

They drifted under the great twelve-inch pinned tim-
bers of the foot-bridge towards the bench, and, I
gathered, the time was very near at hand. The stuff
was getting in its work. Blue, white, and blue again,
rolled over the navvy's face in waves, till all settled to
one rich clay-bank yellow and— that fell which fell.

I thought of the blowing up of Hell Gate; of the gey-
sers in the Yellowstone Park; of Jonah and his whale:
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

but the lively original, as I watched it foreshortened
from above, exceeded all these things. He staggered to
the bench, the heavy wooden seat cramped with iron
cramps into the enduring stone, and clung there with
his left hand. It quivered and shook, as a breakwater-
pile quivers to the rush of landward-racing seas; nor
was there lacking when he caught his breath, the
" scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the
tide." His right hand was upon the doctor's collar, so
that the two shook to one paroxysm, pendulums vibrat-
ing together, while I, apart, shook with them.

It was colossal— immense ; but of certain manifesta-
tions the English language stops short. French only,
the caryatid French of Victor Hugo, would have de-
scribed it; so I mourned while I laughed, hastily shuf-
fling and discarding inadequate adjectives. The vehe-
mence of the shock spent itself, and the sufferer half fell,
half knelt, across the bench. He was calling now upon
God and his wife, huskily, as the wounded bull calls
upon the unscathed herd to stay. Curiously enough, he
used no bad language : that had gone from him with the
rest. The doctor exhibited gold. It was taken and
retained. So, too, was the grip on the coat-collar.

" If I could stand," boomed the giant, despairingly,
" I 'd smash you— you an' your drinks. I 'm dyin' —
dyin'— dyin'l"

4 1 That 's what you think, ' ' said the doctor. * ' You '11
find it will do you a lot of good " ; and, making a virtue
of a somewhat imperative necessity, he added: "I '11
stay by you. If you 'd let go of me a minute I 'd give
you something that would settle you."
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

" You 've settled me now, you damned anarchist.
Takin' the bread out of the mouth of an English workin'-
man! But I '11 keep 'old of you till I 'm well or dead.
I never did you no 'arm. S'pose I were a little full.
They pumped me out once at Guy's with a stummick-
pump. I could see that, but I can't see this 'ere, an'
it 's killin' of me by slow degrees. ' '

" You '11 be all right in half-an-hour. What do you
suppose I 'd want to kill you for? " said the doctor, who
came of a logical breed.

" 'Ow do I know? Tell 'em in court. You '11 get
seven years for this, you body-snatcher. That 's what
you are— a bloomin' body-snatcher. There 's justice, I
tell you, in England; and my Union '11 prosecute, too.
We don't stand no tricks with people's insides 'ere. They
give a woman ten years for a sight less than this. An'
you '11 'ave to pay 'undreds an' 'undreds o' pounds, be-
sides a pension to the missus. You '11 see, you physickin'
furriner. Where 's your licence to do such? You '11
catch it, I tell you!"

Then I observed what I have frequently observed
before, that a man who is but reasonably afraid of an
altercation with an alien has a most poignant dread of
the operations of foreign law. The doctor's voice was
flute-like in its exquisite politeness, as he answered :

" But I 've given you a very great deal of money—
fif— three pounds, I think."

" An' what 's three pound for poisonin' the likes o*
me ? They told me at Guy's I 'd fetch twenty— cold— on
the slates. Ouh! It 's comin' again."

A second time he was cut down by the foot, as it
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

were, and the straining bench rocked to and fro as I
averted my eyes.

It was the very point of perfection in the heart of an
English May-day. The unseen tides of the air had
turned, and all nature was setting its face with the
shadows of the horse-chestnuts towards the peace of the
coming night. But there were hours yet, I knew— long,
long hours of the eternal English twilight— to the end-
ing of the day. I was well content to be alive— to
abandon myself to the drift of Time and Fate; to absorb
great peace through my skin, and to love my country
with the devotion that three thousand miles of interven-
ing sea bring to fullest flower. And what a garden of
Eden it was, this fatted, clipped, and washen land ! A
man could camp in any open field with more sense of
home and security than the stateliest buildings of foreign
cities could afford. And the joy was that it was all mine
alienably— groomed hedgerow, spotless road, decent
greystone cottage, serried spinney, tasselled copse, apple-
bellied hawthorn, and well-grown tree. A light puff of
wind— it scattered flakes of may over the gleaming rails
—gave me a faint whiff as it might have been of fresh
cocoanut, and I knew that the golden gorse was in bloom
somewhere out of sight. Linnaeus had thanked God on
his bended knees when he first saw a field of it; and, by
the way, the navvy was on his knees, too. But he was
by no means praying. He was purely disgustful.

The doctor was compelled to bend over him, his face

towards the back of the seat, and from what I had seen

I supposed the navvy was now dead. If that were the

case it would be time for me to go; but I knew that so

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long as a man trusts himself to the current of Circum-
stance, reaching out for and rejecting nothing that
comes his way, no harm can overtake him. It is the
contriver, the schemer, who is caught by the Law, and
never the philosopher. I knew that when the play was
played, Destiny herself would move me on from the
corpse; and I felt very sorry for the doctor.

In the far distance, presumably upon the road that
led to Framlynghame Admiral, there appeared a vehicle
and a horse— the one ancient fly that almost every vil-
lage can produce at need. This thing was advancing,
unpaid by me, towards the station ; would have to pass
along the deep-cut lane, below the railway-bridge, and
come out on the doctor's side. I was in the centre of
things, so all sides were alike to me. Here, then, was
my machine from the machine. When it arrived, some-
thing would happen, or something else. For the rest, I
owned my deeply interested soul.

The doctor, by the seat, turned so far as his cramped
position allowed, his head over his left shoulder, and
laid his right hand upon his lips. I threw back my hat
and elevated my eyebrows in the form of a question.
The doctor shut his eyes and nodded his head slowly
twice or thrice, beckoning me to come. I descended
cautiously, and it was as the signs had told. The navvy
was asleep, empty to the lowest notch; yet his hand
clutched still the doctor's collar, and at the lightest
movement (the doctor was really very cramped) tight-
ened mechanically, as the hand of a sick woman tightens
on that of the watcher. He had dropped, squatting
almost upon his heels, and, falling lower, had dragged
the doctor over to the left.

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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

The doctor thrust his right hand, which was free, into
his pocket, drew forth some keys, and shook his head.
The navvy gurgled in his sleep. Silently I dived into
my pocket, took out one sovereign, and held it up be-
tween finger and thumb. Again the doctor shook his
head. Money was not what was lacking to his peace.
His bag had fallen from the seat to the ground. He
looked towards it, and opened his mouth— O-shape.
The catch was not a difficult one, and when I had mas-
tered it, the doctor's right forefinger was sawing the
air. With an immense caution, I extracted from the
bag such a knife as they use for cutting collops off legs.
The doctor frowned, and with his first and second fin-
gers imitated the action of scissors. Again I searched,
and found a most diabolical pair of cock-nosed shears,
capable of vandyking the interiors of elephants. The
doctor then slowly lowered his left shoulder till the
navvy's right wrist was supported by the bench, paus-
ing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled anew.
Lower and lower the doctor sank, kneeling now by the
navvy's side, till his head was on a level with, and just
in front of, the great hairy fist, and— there was no ten-
sion on the coat-collar. Then light dawned on me.

Beginning a little to the right of the spinal column, I
cut a huge demilune out of his new spring overcoat,
bringing it round as far under his left side (which was
the right side of the navvy) as I dared. Passing thence
swiftly to the back of the seat, and reaching between
the splines, I sawed through the silk-faced front on the
left-hand side of the coat till the two cuts joined.

Cautiously as the box-turtle of his native heath, the
doctor drew away sideways and to the right, with the
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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

air of a frustrated burglar coming out from under a bed,
and stood up free, one black diagonal shoulder project-
ing through the grey of his ruined overcoat. I returned
the scissors to the bag, snapped the catch, and held all
out to him as the wheels of the fly rang hollow under
the railway arch.

It came at a footpace past the wicket-gate of the
station, and the doctor stopped it with a whisper. It was
going some five miles across country to bring home from
church some one, —I could not catch the name, —because
his own carriage-horses were lame. Its destination
happened to be the one place in all the world that the
doctor was most burningly anxious to visit, and he
promised the driver untold gold to drive to some ancient
flame of his— Helen Blazes, she was called.

"Are n't you coming, too?" he said, bundling his
overcoat into his bag.

Now the fly had been so obviously sent to the doctor,
and to no one else, that I had no concern with it. Our
roads, I saw, divided, and there was, further, a need
upon me to laugh.

"I shall stay here," I said. " It 's a very pretty
country."

" My God! " he murmured, as softly as he shut the
door, and I felt that it was a prayer.

Then he went out of my life, and I shaped my course
for the railway-bridge. It was necessary to pass by the
bench once more, but the wicket was between us. The
departure of the fly had waked the navvy. He crawled
on to the seat, and with malignant eyes watched the
driver flog down the road.

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MY SUNDAY AT HOME

" The man inside o' that," he called, " 'as poisoned
me. 'E 's a body-snatcher. 'E 's comin' back again
when I 'm cold. 'Ere 's my evidence! "

He waved his share of the overcoat, and I went my
way, because I was hungry. Framlynghame Admiral
village is a good two miles from the station, and I waked
the holy calm of the evening every step of that way
with shouts and yells, casting myself down in the flank
of the good green hedge when I was too weak to stand.
There was an inn,— a blessed inn with a thatched roof,
and peonies in the garden,— and I ordered myself an
upper chamber in which the Foresters held their courts
for the laughter was not all out of me. A bewildered
woman brought me ham and eggs, and I leaned out of
the mullioned window, and laughed between mouthfuls.
I sat long above the beer and the perfect smoke that
followed, till the lights changed in the quiet street, and I
began to think of the seven forty-five down, and all that
world of the " Arabian Nights " I had quitted.

Descending, I passed a giant in moleskins who filled
the low-ceiled tap-room. Many empty plates stood be-
fore him, and beyond them a fringe of the Framlynghame
Admiralty, to whom he was unfolding a wondrous tale of
anarchy, of body-snatching, of bribery, and the Valley
of the Shadow from the which he was but newly risen.
And as he talked he ate, and as he ate he drank, for
there was much room in him; and anon he paid royally,
speaking of Justice and the Law, before whom all Eng-
lishmen are equal, and all foreigners and anarchists
vermin, and slime.

On my way to the station, he passed me with great
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strides, his head high among the low-flying bats, his feet
firm on the packed road-metal, his fists clinched, and
his breath coming sharply. There was a beautiful smell
in the air— the smell of white dust, bruised nettles, and
smoke, that brings tears to the throat of a man who sees
his country but seldom— a smell like the echoes of the
lost talk of lovers ; the infinitely suggestive odour of an
immemorial civilisation. It was a perfect walk; and,
lingering on every step, I came to the station just as the
one porter lighted the last of a truck-load of lamps, and
set them back in the lamp-room, while he dealt tickets
to four or five of the population who, not contented with
their own peace, thought fit to travel. It was no ticket
that the navvy seemed to need. He was sitting on a
bench, wrathfully grinding a tumbler into fragments
with his heel. I abode in obscurity at the end of the
platform, interested as ever, thank Heaven, in my sur-
roundings. There was a jar of wheels on the road. The
navvy rose as they approached, strode through the
wicket, and laid a hand upon a horse's bridle that
brought the beast up on his hireling hind legs. It was
the providential fly coming back, and for a moment I
wondered whether the doctor had been mad enough to
revisit his practice.

" Get away; you 're drunk," said the driver.

" I 'm not, ' ' said the navvy. " I ' ve been waitin' 'ere
hours and hours. Come out, you beggar inside there! "

" Go on, driver," said a voice I did not know— a crisp,
clear, English voice.

" All right," said the navvy. " You would n't 'ear
me when I was polite. Now will you come? "
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There was a chasm in the side of the fly, for he had
wrenched the door bodily off its hinges, and was feeling
within purposefully. A well-booted leg rewarded him,
and there came out, not with delight, hopping on one
foot, a round and grey-haired Englishman, from whose
armpits dropped hymn-books, but from his mouth an
altogether different service of song.

' ' Come on, you bloomin' body-snatcher ! You thought
I was dead, did you?" roared the navvy. And the re-
spectable gentleman came accordingly, inarticulate with
rage.

" 'Ere 's a man murderin' the Squire," the driver
shouted, and fell from his box upon the navvy's neck.

To do them justice, the people of Framlynghame Ad-
miral, so many as were on the platform, rallied to the
call in the best spirit of feudalism. It was the one por-
ter who beat the navvy on the nose with a ticket-punch,
but it was the three third-class tickets who attached
themselves to his legs and freed the captive.

" Send for a constable! lock him up! " said that man,
adjusting his collar ; and unitedly they cast him into the
lamp-room, and turned the key, while the driver
mourned over the wrecked fly.

Till then the navvy, whose only desire was justice,
had kept his temper nobly. Then he went Berserk be-
fore our amazed eyes. The door of the lamp-room was
generously constructed, and would not give an inch,
but the window he tore from its fastenings and hurled
outwards. The one porter counted the damage in a
loud voice, and the others, arming themselves with agri-
cultural implements from the station garden, kept up a
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ceaseless winnowing before the window, themselves
backed close to the wall, and bade the prisoner think of
the gaol. He answered little to the point, so far as they
could understand; but seeing that his exit was impeded,
he took a lamp and hurled it through the wrecked sash.
It fell on the metals and went out. With inconceivable
velocity, the others, fifteen in all, followed, looking like
rockets in the gloom, and with the last (he could have
had no plan) the Berserk rage left him as the doctor's
deadly brewage waked up, under the stimulus of violent
exercise and a very full meal, to one last cataclysmal
exhibition, and— we heard the whistle of the seven forty-
five down.

They were all acutely interested in as much of the
wreck as they could see, for the station smelt to Heaven
of oil, and the engine skittered over broken glass like a
terrier in a cucumber-frame. The guard had to hear of it,
and the Squire had his version of the brutal assault, and
heads were out all along the carriages as I found me a seat.

" What is the row? " said a young man, as I entered.
" 'Man drunk?"

" Well, the symptoms, so far as my observation has
gone, more resemble those of Asiatic cholera than any-
thing else," I answered, slowly and judicially, that
every word might carry weight in the appointed scheme
of things. Up till then, you will observe, I had taken
no part in that war.

He was an Englishman, but he collected his belongings
as swiftly as had the American, ages before, and leaped
upon the platform, crying: " Can I be of any service?
I 'm a doctor."

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From the lamp-room I heard a wearied voice wailing :
" Another bloomin' doctor! "

And the seven forty-five carried me on, a step nearer
to Eternity, by the road that is worn and seamed and
channelled with the passions, and weaknesses, and
warring interests of man who is immortal and master
of his fate.

[381]

THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

THE BRUSHWOOD BOY

Girls and boys, come out to play :

The moon is shining as bright as day !

Leave your supper and leave your sleep,

And come with your playfellows out in the street !

Up the ladder and down the wall —

A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at
the top of his voice, his fists clinched and his eyes
full of terror. At first no one heard, for his nursery
was in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a
gardener among the laurels. Then the housekeeper
passed that way, and hurried to soothe him. He was
her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.

" What was it, then? What was it, then? There 's
nothing to frighten him, Georgie dear."

"It was— it was a policeman! He was on the Down
—I saw him! He came in. Jane said he would. "

" Policemen don't come into houses, dearie. Turn
over, and take my hand."

" I saw him— on the Down. He came here. Where
is your hand, Harper? "

The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the
regular breathing of sleep before she stole out.

" Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master
Georgie about policemen? "