Mrs. Jeremy smiled and shook her head at her husband, sighed again, and returned to her work.
"And so now I'm a special constable, and I wear a belt and a truncheon, and what good do I do? Baby loves it, I admit that; Baby admires me immensely. When Nurse says, 'If you're not a good girl the special constable will be after you,' Baby shrieks with delight. But officially, in the village, I am useless.... Oh but I forgot, I arrested a man this morning."
"Jeremy, and you never told me!" said Mrs. Jeremy excitedly.
"Well, I wasn't quite sure at the time whether I arrested him or he arrested me. But in the clearer light of evening I see that it was really I who was doing the arresting. At any rate it was I who had the belt and the note-book."
"No, it was old Jack, rather drunk. I arrested him for being intoxicated on a bridge--the one over the brook, you know, by Claytons. He put his arm round my neck and we started for the Haverley police-station together. I didn't want to go to the police-station, because it's three miles off, but Jack insisted.... He had me tight by the neck. I couldn't even make a note."
"My darling, one couldn't hit old Jack with a truncheon; he's such a jolly old boy when he's sober." Jeremy played nervously with his wife's scissors, and added, "Besides he was doing things with the truncheon himself."
"Conducting the _Marseillaise_ chiefly--we marched along in time to it." A smile spread slowly over Jeremy's face as the scene came back to him. "It must have looked splendid."
"How dared he?" said Mrs. Jeremy indignantly.
"Oh, well, if you make your husband a special constable you must expect these things. I consoled myself with the thought that I was doing my duty ... and that there was nobody about. You see, we made a detour and missed Haverley, and when we were nearly home again he left me. I mean I released him. You know, I'm not what I call a _good_ special constable. I did what I could, but there must be more in it than that."
Mrs. Jeremy looked up and blew a kiss to him.
"However," he went on, "I dropped in on him this evening and made him sign the pledge."
"Well, there you are; you _have_ done some good."
"Yes, but I hadn't got my truncheon on then. I spoke as Jeremy Smith, Esq." He put a brassey to his shoulder and said, "Bang," and went on, "I should be no good at all at the front, and Lord KITCHENER would be no good trying to paint my water-colours, but all the same I scored an inner last night. The scene at the range when it got about that the President had scored an inner was one of wild enthusiasm. When the news is flashed to Berlin it will give the GERMAN EMPEROR pause. Do you know that the most unpatriotic thing you can do is to make shirts for the wounded, when there are lots of poor women in the village who'd be only too glad of the job? Like little Miss Merton. And yet you think to get out of it by making your husband a special constable."