is, if we stick together faithful, sir.”     

       “Oh, we shall! One thing puzzles me about you, Sergeant. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before. Sometimes you speak almost like an educated man; at others your speech is, well, illiterate.”     

       “Well, sir, it’s a sort of mixture of my mother; she was class, the blighter who come after my father, and the Board School—”     

       “Of course! What they call the educational ladder! That explains it. By the way, I’m thinking of changing our doctor.”     

       “Good job, too. I ‘ate that Irechester. Stares at you, that chap does.”     

       “Does he stare at your eyes?’” asked Beaumaroy thoughtfully.     

       “I don’t know that he does at my eyes particularly. Nothing wrong with ‘em, is there?” The Sergeant sounded rather truculent.     

       “Never mind that; but I fancied he stared at Mr. Saffron’s. And I’ve read somewhere, in some book or other, that doctors can tell, or guess, by the eyes. Well, that’s only an idea. How does a lady doctor appeal to you, Sergeant?”     

       “I should be shy,” said the Sergeant, grinning.     

       “Vulgar! vulgar!” Beaumaroy murmured.     

       “That Dr. Mary Arkroyd?”     

       “I had thought of her.”     

       “She ought to be fair easy to kid. You ‘ave notions sometimes, sir.”     

       Beaumaroy stretched out his legs, debonnair, well-rounded legs, to the seducing blaze of oak logs.     

       “I haven’t really a care in the world,” he said.     

       The Sergeant’s reply, or comment, had a disconcerting ring. “And you’re sure of ‘Eaven? That’s what the bloke always says to the ‘angman.”     

       “I’ve no intention of being a murderer, Sergeant.”       Beaumaroy’s 

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