She is less fortunate than the wife of Black Sheep No. 2. Last Saturday we were peacefully entertaining a couple of week-end visitors, when poor Mrs. Mutton crawled into our garden to “see the young lady.” The water-butt myth was cast to the winds. She had a black eye and a dislocated thumb, and informed us that Mutton had threatened to “do for her,” and that she was going in fear of her life. “When not drunk,” she remarked with the apathy of despair, “I think he’s mad!”
Mutton is well known in the district for his playful ways, and no one would consent to house his wife but an enterprising 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!”
COUNTY POLICE METHODS
Little Jimmy Mutton and she had spent the previous night out under fear of a gun, which Black Sheep père 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 Paddockstown could lay a finger on it.
Could not at least the village Bobby keep an eye on the house where the enterprising barber had taken in the refugees?
The Magistrate smiled at such ignorance of the law. All orders must come from Paddockstown.