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Mr. Grummit flung indoors and, after wasting some time concocting impossible measures of retaliation with his sympathetic partner, went off to discuss affairs with his intimates at the Bricklayers’ Arms. The company, although unanimously agreeing that Mr. Evans ought to be boiled, were miserably deficient in ideas as to the means by which such a desirable end was to be attained.

“Make ‘im a laughing-stock, that’s the best thing,” said an elderly labourer. “The police don’t like being laughed at.”

“‘Ow?” demanded Mr. Grummit, with some asperity.

“There’s plenty o’ ways,” said the old man.

“I should find ’em out fast enough if I ‘ad a bucket dropped on my back, I know.”

Mr. Grummit made a retort the feebleness of which was somewhat balanced by its ferocity, and subsided into glum silence. His back still ached, but, despite that aid to intellectual effort, the only ways he could imagine of making the constable look foolish contained an almost certain risk of hard labour for himself.

He pondered the question for a week, and meanwhile the tins–to the secret disappointment of Mr. Evans–remained untouched in his yard. For the whole of the time he went about looking, as Mrs. Grummit expressed it, as though his dinner had disagreed with him.

“I’ve been talking to old Bill Smith,” he said, suddenly, as he came in one night.

Mrs. Grummit looked up, and noticed with wifely pleasure that he was looking almost cheerful.

“He’s given me a tip,” said Mr. Grummit, with a faint smile; “a copper mustn’t come into a free-born Englishman’s ‘ouse unless he’s invited.”

“Wot of it?” inquired his wife. “You wasn’t think of asking him in, was you?”

Mr. Grummit regarded her almost play-fully. “If a copper comes in without being told to,” he continued, “he gets into trouble for it. Now d’ye see?”

“But he won’t come,” said the puzzled Mrs. Grummit.

Mr. Grummit winked. “Yes ‘e will if you scream loud enough,” he retorted. “Where’s the copper-stick?”

“Have you gone mad?” demanded his wife, “or do you think I ‘ave?”

“You go up into the bedroom,” said Mr. Grummit, emphasizing his remarks with his forefinger. “I come up and beat the bed black and blue with the copper-stick; you scream for mercy and call out ‘Help!’ ‘Murder!’ and things like that. Don’t call out ‘Police!’ cos Bill ain’t sure about that part. Evans comes bursting in to save your life–I’ll leave the door on the latch–and there you are. He’s sure to get into trouble for it. Bill said so. He’s made a study o’ that sort o’ thing.”

Mrs. Grummit pondered this simple plan so long that her husband began to lose patience. At last, against her better sense, she rose and fetched the weapon in question.

“And you be careful what you’re hitting,” she said, as they went upstairs to bed. “We’d better have ‘igh words first, I s’pose?”

“You pitch into me with your tongue,” said Mr. Grummit, amiably.

Mrs. Grummit, first listening to make sure that the constable and his wife were in the bedroom the other side of the flimsy wall, complied, and in a voice that rose gradually to a piercing falsetto told Mr. Grummit things that had been rankling in her mind for some months. She raked up misdemeanours that he had long since forgotten, and, not content with that, had a fling at the entire Grummit family, beginning with her mother-in-law and ending with Mr. Grummit’s youngest sister. The hand that held the copper-stick itched.

“Any more to say?” demanded Mr. Grummit advancing upon her.

Mrs. Grummit emitted a genuine shriek, and Mr. Grummit, suddenly remembering himself, stopped short and attacked the bed with extraordinary fury. The room resounded with the blows, and the efforts of Mrs. Grummit were a revelation even to her husband.

“I can hear ‘im moving,” whispered Mr. Grummit, pausing to take breath.

“Mur–der!” wailed his wife. “Help! Help!”

Mr. Grummit, changing the stick into his left hand, renewed the attack; Mrs. Grummit, whose voice was becoming exhausted, sought a temporary relief in moans.