OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



prising barber: on the condition, however, that Mutton 

 did not come after her. The poor thing shivered and 

 shook, and avowed that she could not return and pass 

 another hour in such terrors. When she heard his step, 

 she told us, a trembling would seize her. 

 " You ladies/' she said, rolling her hopeless eyes from one 

 sympathetic listener to another, " can have no idea of the 

 kind of life poor women like us lead ! " 

 Little Jimmy Mutton and she had spent the previous night 

 out under fear of a gun, which Black Sheep pere had taken 

 to bed with him, with threats of instant use. The first idea 

 of the owners of Villino Loki was that the woman should 

 have protection,- and here the drama took a Gilbertian 

 form with a dash of nightmare. Her cottage being on the 

 borders of another county, no policeman nearer than nine 

 miles off had the right to intervene. In vain did "the 

 young lady," attended by the two week-end visitors, start 

 off for the nearest magistrate and lay the case before him. 

 Mrs. Mutton must betake herself to that far county town, 

 by what means she best might / and if she and her poor 

 lambs were "done for" between this and then, it would 

 all be within the strict limits of the law as far as the 

 magistrate was concerned. With fruitless eloquence were 

 the perils of the situation painted in their blackest 

 colours. Mutton, as we have said, was famous, and 

 like Habacuc in Voltaire's estimation, might be capable 

 de tout. 



Could not the local policeman take possession of the 

 gun? 



Impossible. No policeman nearer than Paddocks town 

 could lay a finger on it. 

 186 



