Under the Royal Arms sat Sir Chartres Biron, white-haired and exceedingly wise to human nature. He was dealing with a pathetic collection of women prisoners who had been waiting in a "Prisoners Only" room of their own. Constable after constable described scenes of revelry in which it was alleged that certain inadequate Bacchantes in black bonnets had been urged to deeds of violence. Some women pleaded guilty and got it all over quickly. Others clasped and unclasped their hands--appealing, thin, worn hands grimed with work--and tried to impress Sir Chartres that "two glasses of port" had been the cause of all their trouble. They were fined and went their way, some with an assumption of belated dignity, others jauntily. One old lady was so pleased with her sentence that she danced down the corridor between two lines of policemen promising never to look upon the wine again. * * * Then one by one my friends of the waiting-room came up for justice: drunk and disorderly, drunk in charge of a motor-car, creating a disturbance, using insulting language. They all looked sorry for themselves and exceedingly foolish. Five deaf and dumb youths had, it appeared, pushed a policeman off the pavement. The mother of one of them interpreted the case, talked to them in baby language, asked them if they had really "banged" the policeman. They nodded their heads and tried to speak, but only vague, tortured sounds, heart-rending to hear, came from their mouths. They filed out, bound over. Then Cæsar strode into the dock, said he had been drunk, accepted his fine without a trace of emotion, and walked from the dock with an invisible cohort before him and--a visible bottle sticking out of his coat-tails! * * * When he has done his day's work does Sir Chartres Biron feel more like laughing or crying, I wonder? Boys on the Bridge Boys are always leaning over London Bridge, as right-minded boys have been leaning these five hundred years and more. Beneath them the Thames, that loved river of ours, swirls and eddies round the piers, sucking at the weathered stone as it runs seawards, out and away. When I joined them the other day I noticed with an authentic thrill that against the grim wharves men were doing interesting things in ships. No matter how trivial the act--the hauling of a rope, the turning of a winch, the painting of a hull--it becomes somehow vital and significant to anyone on dry land. To a London office boy who has been told not to linger by the wayside--ah! how exquisite, how irresistible!