No dispassionate auditor could have failed to detect the nasty ring of sarcasm. It stung Henry. He was not normally a man who believed in violence to the gentler sex outside a clump on the head of his missus when the occasion seemed to demand it: but now he threw away the guiding principles of a lifetime and turned on Jill like a tiger.
Henry, now thoroughly overwrought, made a rush at Jill: and Jill, who had a straight eye, hit him accurately on the side of the head.
And then, from behind Jill, a voice spoke.
A stout policeman had manifested himself from empty space.
Erb, who had been a silent spectator of the fray, burst into speech. “She ’it ’im!”
The policeman looked at Jill. He was an officer of many years’ experience in the Force, and time had dulled in him that respect for good clothes which he had brought with him from Little-Sudbury-in-the-Wold in the days of his novitiate. Jill was well-dressed, but, in the stirring epoch of the Suffrage disturbances, the policeman had been kicked on the shins and even bitten by ladies of an equally elegant exterior. Hearts, the policeman knew, just as pure and fair may beat in Belgrave Square as in the lowlier air of Seven Dials, but you have to pinch them just the same when they disturb the peace. His gaze, as it fell upon Jill, red-handed as it were with the stick still in her grasp, was stern.
“Your name, please, and address, miss?” he said.
A girl in blue with a big hat had come up, and was standing staring open-mouthed at the group. At the sight of her Bill the parrot uttered a shriek of welcome. Nelly Bryant had returned, and everything would now be all right again.
“Mariner,” said Jill, pale and bright-eyed. “I live at Number Twenty-two, Ovington Square.”
“Mine? Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Rooke, you know. F. L. Rooke. I live at the Albany and all that sort of thing.”
The policeman made an entry in his note-book. “Officer,” cried Jill, “this man was trying to kill that parrot and I stopped him. …”
“Can’t help that, miss. You ’adn’t no right to hit a man with a stick. You’ll ’ave to come along.”
“But, I say, you know!” Freddie was appalled. This sort of thing had happened to him before, but only on Boat-Race Night at the Empire, where it was expected of a chappie. “I mean to say!”