It was only the guard, who had extended his march to the hall and put his face to the glass to look in at the brew of rum-and-water, and the comfortable party about the fire. ‘Go back on your beat, you scoundrel!’ shouted the warder, menacing the constable with his fist. Then the face disappeared; but every time the sentinel reached the hall window, he applied his nose to the pane and stared in thirstily at the grog that steamed and ran down the throats of his comrades, and cursed the duty that kept him without in the falling dew. His appearance at intervals at the glass, where the fire and candlelight illumined his face, was like that of a fish rising to the surface of a pond to breathe. ‘Is your time come yet outside, Joe dear?’ whispered Jane. ‘Hope not,’ growled Joseph, helping himself freely to rum; putting his hand round the tumbler, so that none might observe how high the spirit stood in the glass before he added the water. ‘Oh, Joe duckie, don’t say that. I’ll go and keep you company on the stone steps: we’ll sit there in the moonlight all alone, as sweet as anything.’ ‘You couldn’t ekal this grog’ answered the unromantic Joseph, ‘if you was ever so sweet. I’ve put in four lumps of double-refined.’ ‘You’ve a sweet tooth, Joe,’ said Jane. ‘Shall I bathe your poor suffering foot again?’ asked the cook, casting languishing eyes at the warder. ‘By-and-by, when the liquor is exhausted,’ answered the warder. ‘Would you like a little more hot water to the spirit?’ said Patience, who was setting—as it is termed in dance phraseology—at the youngest of the constables. ‘No, miss, but I’d trouble you for a little more spirit,’ he answered, ‘to qualify the hot water.’ Then the scullery-maid, who had also found her way in, blocked the other constable in the corner, and offered to sugar his rum. He was a married man, middle-aged, and with a huge disfiguring mole on his nose; but there was no one else for the damsel to ogle and address, so she fixed upon him. All at once, whilst this by-play was going on, under cover of the music, the door from the staircase opened, and in sprang Eve, with her tambourine, dressed in the red-and-yellow costume she had found in the garret, and wearing her burnished necklace of bezants. Barbara withdrew her hands from the piano in dismay, and flushed with shame. ‘Eve!’ she exclaimed, ‘go back! How can you!’ But the boy from the table beckoned again to her, pointing to the piano, and her fingers; Eve skipped up to her and whispered, ‘Let me alone, for Jasper’s sake,’ then bounded into the middle of the hall, and rattled her tambourine and clinked its jingles. The men applauded, and tossed off their rum-and-water; then, having finished the rum, mixed themselves eagerly hot jorums of brandy. The face was at the window, with the nose flat and white against the glass, like a dab of putty.