His wife threw herself upon him, but he pushed her out of the way and rushed to the window. Then his jaw dropped and he murmured incoherently, for the ghost of the red policeman was plainly visible. Its lofty carriage of the head and pendulum-like swing of the arms were gone, and it was struggling in a most fleshly manner to lead a recalcitrant costermonger to the station. In the intervals of the wrestling bout it blew loudly upon a whistle. “Wonderful,” said Mrs. Pinner, nervously. “Lifelike, I call it.” The fireman watched the crowd pass up the road, and then he turned and regarded her. “Would you like to hear what I call it?” he thundered. “Not before the baby, Charlie,” quavered Mrs. Pinner, drawing back. The fireman regarded her silently, and his demeanour was so alarming that she grabbed Charles Augustus Pinner suddenly from his cradle and held him in front of her. “You’ve kep’ me here,” said Mr. Pinner, in a voice which trembled with self-pity, “for near three weeks. For three weeks I’ve wasted my time, my little spare time, and my money in making perambulators, and whitewashing and papering, and all sorts of things. I’ve been the larfing-stock o’ this house, and I’ve been worked like a convict. Wot ’ave you got to say for yourself?” “Wot do you mean?” inquired Mrs. Pinner, recovering herself. “I ain’t to blame for what’s in the paper, am I? How was I to know that the policeman as died wasn’t your policeman?” Mr. Pinner eyed her closely, but she met his gaze with eyes honest and clear as those of a child. Then, realising that he was wasting precious time, he picked up his cap, and as C 49 turned the corner with his prize, set off in the opposite direction to spend in the usual manner the brief remnant of the leave which remained to him. A GARDEN PLOT The able-bodied men of the village were at work, the children were at school singing the multiplication-table lullaby, while the wives and mothers at home nursed the baby with one hand and did the housework with the other. At the end of the village an old man past work sat at a rough deal table under the creaking signboard of the Cauliflower, gratefully drinking from a mug of ale supplied by a chance traveller who sat opposite him. The shade of the elms was pleasant and the ale good. The traveller filled his pipe and, glancing at the dusty hedges and the white road baking in the sun, called for the mugs to be refilled, and pushed his pouch towards his companion. After which he paid a compliment to the appearance of the village. “It ain’t what it was when I was a boy,” quavered the old man, filling his pipe with trembling fingers. “I mind when the grindstone was stuck just outside the winder o’ the forge instead o’ being one side as it now is; and as for the shop winder—it’s twice the size it was when I was a young ’un.”