“Ah, I daresay not.”  Policeman Rat-it-all blew out his chest.  “It’s a deep subject,” he added, wagging his head solemnly.  “A very deep subject; and I quite understand your not having time for it lately.  How about that Ejectment Order?”

Nicky-Nan jumped like a man shot.  “Ha—­have you got the—­the thing about ’ee?” he twittered.  “Don’t tell me that Pamphlett has got ’em to send it down? . . .  But there, you can’t do anything on a Bank Holiday, anyway.”

“Have I got the thing about me?” echoed the policeman slowly.  “You talk as if ‘twas a box o’ matches. . . .  Well, I may, or I mayn’t; but anyways I’ve followed the case before Petty Sessions; and if you haven’t a leg to stand on, the only thing is to walk out peaceably.  Mind, I’m puttin’ it unofficial, as between friends.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then, rat it all!—­I mean,” the constable corrected himself to a tolerant smile and gazed down on his mighty hands and arms—­“then I got to put you into the street.”

Nicky-Nan leaned on his stick and the stick shook with his communicated fury.  “Try it—­try it—­try it!” he blazed out.  “Try it, you Bodmin fathead!”

He shuffled away, nodding his head with wrath.  He roamed the cliff-paths for an hour, pausing now and again to lean his back against an out-cropping mass of rock and pass the back of his hand across his eyes, that at first were bloodshot with fury.  He had a great desire to kill Policeman Rat-it-all.  As his passion died down and he limped forward, to pause and again limp forward, his gait and the backward cast of his eye were not unlike those of a hunted hare.

He reached the house door at nightfall, just as Mrs Penhaligon came shepherding her offspring home down the dusky street, ’Biades had yielded to the sleep of exhaustion, and lay like a log in his mother’s arms.  ’Bert, for no other reason than that he had tired himself out, was sulky and uncommunicative.  But ’Beida—­whose whole manner ever changed when once she had been persuaded into fine clothes—­wore an air of sustained gentility.

“Squire Tresawna keeps seven gardeners,” she reported.  “He has three motor-cars and two chauffeurs.  The gardeners keep the front lawn so short with their mowing-machines that ’Biades couldn’t possibly have made the front of his blouse in the mess it is unless he had purposely crawled on his stomach to lower me in the eyes of all.  When it got to a certain point I pretended to have no connection with him.  There was nothing else to do.  Then he felt sorry and wanted to hug me in front of everybody. . . .  Oh, thank you . . . yes, I’ve enjoyed myself very much!  Mrs Tresawna wears a toque:  but I suppose that when you get to a certain position you can carry on with toques long after every one else has given them up.  She has two maids; one of them in a grey velours dress that must have been one of Mrs Tresawna’s cast-offs, for it couldn’t possibly have come out of her wages; though, by the fit, it might have been made for her.”