Mr Clinton.

'Well, I must be getting on with my work,' said the officer--they were
standing on the doorstep and he looked at the public-house opposite, but
Mr Clinton paid no further attention to him. He began to walk slowly
away citywards.

'Well, you are a rummy old file!' said the coroner's officer.

But presently a mist came before Mr Clinton's eyes, everything seemed
suddenly extraordinary, he had an intense pain and he felt himself
falling. He opened his eyes slowly, and found himself sitting on a
doorstep; a policeman was shaking him, asking what his name was. A woman
standing by was holding his top hat; he noticed that his trousers were
muddy, and mechanically he pulled out his handkerchief and began to wipe
them.

He looked vacantly at the policeman asking questions. The woman asked
him if he was better. He motioned her to give him his hat; he put it
feebly on his head and, staggering to his feet, walked unsteadily away.

The rain drizzled down impassively, and cabs passing swiftly splashed up
the yellow mud....

VI

Mr Clinton went back to the office; it was his boast that for ten years
he had never missed a day. But he was dazed; he did his work
mechanically, and so distracted was he that, on going home in the
evening, he forgot to remove his paper cuffs, and his wife remarked upon
them while they were supping. Mrs Clinton was a short, stout person,
with an appearance of immense determination; her black, shiny hair was
parted in the middle--the parting was broad and very white--severely
brushed back and gathered into a little knot at the back of the head;
her face was red and strongly lined, her eyes spirited, her nose
aggressive, her mouth resolute. Everyone has some one procedure which
seems most exactly to suit him--a slim youth bathing in a shaded stream,
an alderman standing with his back to the fire and his thumbs in the
arm-holes of his waistcoat--and Mrs Clinton expressed her complete self,
exhibiting every trait and attribute, on Sunday in church, when she sat
in the front pew self-reliantly singing the hymns in the wrong key. It
was then that she seemed more than ever the personification of a full
stop. Her morals were above suspicion, and her religion Low Church.

'They've moved into the second 'ouse down,' she remarked to her
husband. 'And Mrs Tilly's taken 'er summer curtains down at last.' Mrs
Clinton spent most of her time in watching her neighbours' movements,
and she and her husb