Mr. Grummit, changing the stick into his left hand, renewed the attack; Mrs. Grummit, whose voice was becoming exhausted, sought a temporary relief in moans.

"Is-he--deaf?" panted the wife-beater, "or wot?"

He knocked over a chair, and Mrs. Grummit contrived another frenzied scream. A loud knocking sounded on the wall.

"Hel-lp!" moaned Mrs. Grummit.

"Halloa, there!" came the voice of the constable. "Why don't you keep that baby quiet? We can't get a wink of sleep."

Mr. Grummit dropped the stick on the bed and turned a dazed face to his wife.

"He-he's afraid-to come in," he gasped. "Keep it up, old gal."

He took up the stick again and Mrs. Grummit did her best, but the heart had gone out of the thing, and he was about to give up the task as hopeless when the door below was heard to open with a bang.

"Here he is," cried the jubilant Grummit. "Now!"

His wife responded, and at the same moment the bedroom door was flung open, and her brother, who had been hastily fetched by the neighbours on the other side, burst into the room and with one hearty blow sent Mr.

Grummit sprawling.

"Hit my sister, will you?" he roared, as the astounded Mr. Grummit rose.

"Take that!"

Mr. Grummit took it, and several other favours, while his wife, tugging at her brother, endeavoured to explain. It was not, however, until Mr.

Grummit claimed the usual sanctuary of the defeated by refusing to rise that she could make herself heard.

"Joke?" repeated her brother, incredulously. "Joke?"

Mrs. Grummit in a husky voice explained.

Her brother pa.s.sed from incredulity to amazement and from amazement to mirth. He sat down gurgling, and the indignant face of the injured Grummit only added to his distress.

"Best joke I ever heard in my life," he said, wiping his eyes. "Don't look at me like that, Bob; I can't bear it."

"Get off 'ome," responded Mr. Grummit, glowering at him.

"There's a crowd outside, and half the doors in the place open," said the other. "Well, it's a good job there's no harm done. So long."

He pa.s.sed, beaming, down the stairs, and Mr. Grummit, drawing near the window, heard him explaining in a broken voice to the neighbours outside. Strong men patted him on the back and urged him gruffly to say what he had to say and laugh afterwards. Mr. Grummit turned from the window, and in a slow and stately fashion prepared to retire for the night. Even the sudden and startling disappearance of Mrs. Grummit as she got into bed failed to move him.

"The bed's broke, Bob," she said faintly.

"Beds won't last for ever," he said, shortly; "sleep on the floor."

Mrs. Grummit clambered out, and after some trouble secured the bedclothes and made up a bed in a corner of the room. In a short time she was fast asleep; but her husband, broad awake, spent the night in devising further impracticable schemes for the discomfiture of the foe next door.

He saw Mr. Evans next morning as he pa.s.sed on his way to work. The constable was at the door smoking in his shirt-sleeves, and Mr. Grummit felt instinctively that he was waiting there to see him pa.s.s.

"I heard you last night," said the constable, playfully. "My word! Good gracious!"

"Wot's the matter with you?" demanded Mr. Grummit, stopping short.

The constable stared at him. "She has been knocking you about," he gasped. "Why, it must ha' been you screaming, then! I thought it sounded loud. Why don't you go and get a summons and have her locked up? I should be pleased to take her."

Mr. Grummit faced him, quivering with pa.s.sion. "Wot would it cost if I set about you?" he demanded, huskily.

"Two months," said Mr. Evans, smiling serenely; "p'r'aps three."

Mr. Grummit hesitated and his fists clenched nervously. The constable, lounging against his door-post, surveyed him with a dispa.s.sionate smile.

"That would be besides what you'd get from me," he said, softly.

"Come out in the road," said Mr. Grummit, with sudden violence.

"It's agin the rules," said Mr. Evans; "sorry I can't. Why not go and ask your wife's brother to oblige you?"

He went in laughing and closed the door, and Mr. Grummit, after a frenzied outburst, proceeded on his way, returning the smiles of such acquaintances as he pa.s.sed with an icy stare or a strongly-worded offer to make them laugh the other side of their face. The rest of the day he spent in working so hard that he had no time to reply to the anxious inquiries of his fellow-workmen.

He came home at night glum and silent, the hardship of not being able to give Mr. Evans his deserts without incurring hard labour having weighed on his spirits all day. To avoid the annoyance of the piano next door, which was slowly and reluctantly yielding up "The Last Rose of Summer"

note by note, he went out at the back, and the first thing he saw was Mr. Evans mending his path with tins and other bric-a-brac.

"Nothing like it," said the constable, looking up. "Your missus gave 'em to us this morning. A little gravel on top, and there you are."

He turned whistling to his work again, and the other, after endeavouring in vain to frame a suitable reply, took a seat on an inverted wash-tub and lit his pipe. His one hope was that Constable Evans was going to try and cultivate a garden.

The hope was realized a few days later, and Mr. Grummit at the back window sat gloating over a dozen fine geraniums, some lobelias and calceolarias, which decorated the constable's plot of ground. He could not sleep for thinking of them.

He rose early the next morning, and, after remarking to Mrs. Grummit that Mr. Evans's flowers looked as though they wanted rain, went off to his work. The cloud which had been on his spirits for some time had lifted, and he whistled as he walked. The sight of flowers in front windows added to his good humour.

He was still in good spirits when he left off work that afternoon, but some slight hesitation about returning home sent him to the Brick-layers' firms instead. He stayed there until closing time, and then, being still disinclined for home, paid a visit to Bill Smith, who lived the other side of Tunwich. By the time he started for home it was nearly midnight.

The outskirts of the town were deserted and the houses in darkness. The clock of Tunwich church struck twelve, and the last stroke was just dying away as he turned a corner and ran almost into the arms of the man he had been trying to avoid.

"Halloa!" said Constable Evans, sharply. "Here, I want a word with you."

Mr. Grummit quailed. "With me, sir?" he said, with involuntary respect.

"What have you been doing to my flowers?" demanded the other, hotly.

"Flowers?" repeated Mr. Grummit, as though the word were new to him.

"Flowers? What flowers?"

"You know well enough," retorted the constable. "You got over my fence last night and smashed all my flowers down."

"You be careful wot you're saying," urged Mr. Grummit. "Why, I love flowers. You don't mean to tell me that all them beautiful flowers wot you put in so careful 'as been spoiled?"

"You know all about it," said the constable, choking. "I shall take out a summons against you for it."

"Ho!" said Mr. Grummit. "And wot time do you say it was when I done it?"