“The bed’s broke, Bob,” she said faintly.

“Beds won’t last for ever,” he said, shortly; “sleep on the floor.”

Mrs. Grummit clambered out, and after some trouble secured the bedclothes and made up a bed in a corner of the room.  In a short time she was fast asleep; but her husband, broad awake, spent the night in devising further impracticable schemes for the discomfiture of the foe next door.

He saw Mr. Evans next morning as he passed on his way to work.  The constable was at the door smoking in his shirt-sleeves, and Mr. Grummit felt instinctively that he was waiting there to see him pass.

“I heard you last night,” said the constable, playfully.  “My word!  Good gracious!”

“Wot’s the matter with you?” demanded Mr. Grummit, stopping short.

The constable stared at him.  “She has been knocking you about,” he gasped.  “Why, it must ha’ been you screaming, then!  I thought it sounded loud.  Why don’t you go and get a summons and have her locked up?  I should be pleased to take her.”

Mr. Grummit faced him, quivering with passion.  “Wot would it cost if I set about you?” he demanded, huskily.

“Two months,” said Mr. Evans, smiling serenely; “p’r’aps three.”

Mr. Grummit hesitated and his fists clenched nervously.  The constable, lounging against his door-post, surveyed him with a dispassionate smile.  “That would be besides what you’d get from me,” he said, softly.

“Come out in the road,” said Mr. Grummit, with sudden violence.

“It’s agin the rules,” said Mr. Evans; “sorry I can’t.  Why not go and ask your wife’s brother to oblige you?”

He went in laughing and closed the door, and Mr. Grummit, after a frenzied outburst, proceeded on his way, returning the smiles of such acquaintances as he passed with an icy stare or a strongly-worded offer to make them laugh the other side of their face.  The rest of the day he spent in working so hard that he had no time to reply to the anxious inquiries of his fellow-workmen.

He came home at night glum and silent, the hardship of not being able to give Mr. Evans his deserts without incurring hard labour having weighed on his spirits all day.  To avoid the annoyance of the piano next door, which was slowly and reluctantly yielding up “The Last Rose of Summer” note by note, he went out at the back, and the first thing he saw was Mr. Evans mending his path with tins and other bric-a-brac.

“Nothing like it,” said the constable, looking up.  “Your missus gave ’em to us this morning.  A little gravel on top, and there you are.”

He turned whistling to his work again, and the other, after endeavouring in vain to frame a suitable reply, took a seat on an inverted wash-tub and lit his pipe.  His one hope was that Constable Evans was going to try and cultivate a garden.

The hope was realized a few days later, and Mr. Grummit at the back window sat gloating over a dozen fine geraniums, some lobelias and calceolarias, which decorated the constable’s plot of ground.  He could not sleep for thinking of them.