Page:WW Jacobs--The lady of the barge.djvu/143

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Cupboard Love
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constable from a distant hedge saw a friend of the widow's enter the cottage, and a little later both ladies emerged and walked up the road.

He watched them turn the corner, and then, with a cautious glance round, which failed, however, to discover Mr. Negget, the ex-constable strolled casually in the direction of the cottage, and approaching it from the rear, turned the handle of the door and slipped in.

He searched the parlour hastily, and then, after a glance from the window, ventured up stairs. And he was in the thick of his self-imposed task when his graceless nephew by marriage, who had met Mrs. Driver and referred pathetically to a raging thirst which he had hoped to have quenched with some of her home-brewed, brought the ladies hastily back again.

"I'll go round the back way," said the wily Negget as they approached the cottage. "I just want to have a look at that pig of yours."

He reached the back door at the same time as Mr. Bodfish, and placing his legs apart, held it firmly against the frantic efforts of the ex-constable. The struggle ceased suddenly, and the

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