ort of things?"

"Conducting the _Marseillaise_ chiefly--we marched along in time to it."
A smile spread slowly over Jeremy's face as the scene came back to him.
"It must have looked splendid."

"How dared he?" said Mrs. Jeremy indignantly.

"Oh, well, if you make your husband a special constable you must expect
these things. I consoled myself with the thought that I was doing my
duty ... and that there was nobody about. You see, we made a detour and
missed Haverley, and when we were nearly home again he left me. I mean I
released him. You know, I'm not what I call a _good_ special constable.
I did what I could, but there must be more in it than that."

Mrs. Jeremy looked up and blew a kiss to him.

"However," he went on, "I dropped in on him this evening and made him
sign the pledge."

"Well, there you are; you _have_ done some good."

"Yes, but I hadn't got my truncheon on then. I spoke as Jeremy Smith,
Esq." He put a brassey to his shoulder and said, "Bang," and went on, "I
should be no good at all at the front, and Lord KITCHENER would be no
good trying to paint my water-colours, but all the same I scored an
inner last night. The scene at the range when it got about that the
President had scored an inner was one of wild enthusiasm. When the news
is flashed to Berlin it will give the GERMAN EMPEROR pause. Do you know
that the most unpatriotic thing you can do is to make shirts for the
wounded, when there are lots of poor women in the village who'd be only
too glad of the job? Like little Miss Merton. And yet you think to get
out of it by making your husband a special constable."

Mrs. Jeremy put down her work and went over to her husband and knelt by
his chair.

"Do you know," she said, taking his hands in hers, "that there isn't a
man, woman or child in this village who is idle or neglected or
forgotten? That those who wanted to enlist have been encouraged and told
how to, and that those who didn't want to have been shown other ways of
helping? That it's all been done without any fuss or high-falutin or
busy-bodying, and chiefly because of an absurd husband of mine who never
talks seriously about anything, but somehow manages to make everybody
else willing and good-tempered?"

"Is that a fact?" said Jeremy, rather pleased.

"It is. And this absurd husband didn't understand how much he was
helping, and he had an idea that he ought to do something thoroughly
uncomfortable, so he ordered a truncheon and ga