“Come, marm, come,” said George, “draw it mild from that tap.”

“You won’t believe me, won’t you?” said the woman, on whom the liquor was now beginning to take its full effect; “then I’ll show you,” and she staggered to a desk, unlocked it and took from it a folded paper, which she opened.

It was a properly certified copy of a marriage certificate, or purported so to be; but George, who was not too quick at his reading, had only time to note the name Quest, and the church, St. Bartholomew’s, Hackney, when she snatched it away from him and locked it up again.

“There,” she said, “it isn’t any business of yours.  What right have you to come prying into the affairs of a poor lone woman?” And she sat down upon the sofa beside him, threw her long arm round him, rested her painted face upon his shoulder and began to weep the tears of intoxication.

“Well, blow me!” said George to himself, “if this ain’t a master one!  I wonder what my old missus would say if she saw me in this fix.  I say, marm——­”

But at that moment the door opened, and in came Johnnie, who had evidently also been employing the interval in refreshing himself, for he rolled like a ship in a sea.

“Well,” he said, “and who the deuce are you?  Come get out of this, you Methody parson-faced clodhopper, you.  Fairest Edithia, what means this?”

By this time the fairest Edithia had realised who her visitor was, and the trick whereby he had left her to pay for the brandy-and-soda recurring to her mind she sprang up and began to express her opinion of Johnnie in violent and libellous language.  He replied in appropriate terms, as according to the newspaper reports people whose healths are proposed always do, and fast and furious grew the fun.  At length, however, it seemed to occur to Johnnie that he, George, was in some way responsible for this state of affairs, for without word or warning he hit him on the nose.  This proved too much for George’s Christian forbearance.

“You would, you lubber! would you?” he said, and sprang at him.

Now Johnnie was big and fat, but Johnnie was rather drunk, and George was tough and exceedingly strong.  In almost less time that it takes to write it he grasped the abominable Johnnie by the scruff of the neck and had with a mighty jerk hauled him over the sofa so that he lay face downwards thereon.  By the door quite convenient to his hand stood George’s ground ash stick, a peculiarly good and well-grown one which he had cut himself in Honham wood.  He seized it.  “Now, boar,” he said, “I’ll teach you how we do the trick where I come from,” and he laid on without mercy. Whack! whack! whack! came the ground ash on Johnnie’s tight clothes.  He yelled, swore and struggled in the grip of the sturdy countryman, but it was of no use, the ash came down like fate; never was a Johnnie so bastinadoed before.

“Give it the brute, give it him,” shrilled the fair Edithia, bethinking her of her wrongs, and he did till he was tired.