The two women continued to croon over the wonder-child. Joe took a pipe, filled it with shag and lit it dubiously. This was a bad business. He was a great philosopher, as all policemen are, but whenever a grim eye strayed across the hearth, it was followed by a frown and a grunt of perplexity.
Joe smoked solemnly. The women prattled on. But quite suddenly, like a bolt from a clear sky, there came a very unwelcome intrusion. The street door was flung open and a young constable entered breathlessly.
Dugald Maclean was received with surprise, anger, and dismay. "Now then, my lad, what about it?" demanded Joe, with a snarl of suppressed fury.
"I'm seekin' 'Urban Love, a trilogy,'" proclaimed Dugald Maclean; and he spoke as if the fate of the empires hung upon his finding it.
"Seekin' what, you durned Scotchman?" said the alarmed and disgusted Joe.
With deadly composure, Harriet rose from the side of the sleeping babe.
"Mr. Maclean, it is there," she said, icily. And she pointed to the table where the precious manuscript reclined.
"Thank ye," said Dugald, coolly. And he proceeded to button into his tunic "Urban Love, a trilogy."
But the mischief was done. The alert eye of an ambitious police constable had traveled from the open basket at one side of the fire to the object at the other, sleeping gently now upon Eliza's knee. A slow grin crept over a freckled but vulpine countenance.
"Blame my cats," he muttered, "so there's the young spannil."
