"If they're a species, he's a specie—a man set apart, like a parson. A parson tells you how you ought to behave, and I take you in charge if you don't."
"Like Satan," Nicky-Nan suggested.
"Rat it all! Not a bit like Satan!" said the Constable angrily. "You've not been followin'. I never heard so foolish an interruption in all my born days. . . . What be you carryin' in that there bundle, makin' so bold?"
Nicky-Nan felt his heart stand still. "Just my waskit an' a few odds an' ends," he answered with affected nonchalance. Forcing himself to meet Rat-it-all's gaze, and perceiving it to be dreamy rather than suspicious, he added, "What makes 'ee ask?"
"Nothin', . . . nothin'. . . . Only you reminded me of a song I used to sing, back in the old days. It was called 'Off to Philadelphia in the mornin'.' A beautiful voice I used to have: tenor. I shouldn' wonder if I had it yet; only"—with a wistful sigh—"in the Force you got to put that sort o' thing behind you, . . . which brings me back to what I was saying. In an ordinary way, a police-constable's life is like a parson's: they see more'n most men o' what's goin' on, but they don't belong to it. You can't properly hobnob with a chap that, like as not, you'll be called on to marry or bury to-morra, nor stand him a drink—nor be stood—when, quite as like, next time you'll be servin' a summons. There's a Jane on both sides."
"A who?"
"'Tisn' a ''oo,' 'tis an 'it': bein' an expression I got off an Extension Lecturer they had down to Bodmin, one time. I'd a great hankerin', in those days, to measure six foot two in my socks afore I finished growin', and I signed on for his lectures in that hope. With a man callin' his-self by that name and advertisin' as he'd lecture on 'Measure for Measure,' I thought I'd a little bit of all right. But he ran right off the rails an' chatted away about the rummiest things, such as theatricals. I forget what switched 'en off an' on to that partic'lar line: but I well remember his openin' remark. He said, 'To measure the true stature of a great man we must go down to the true roots. A certain Jane is bound to overtake us if we dig too long among the common 'taturs with their un-stopp'd lines an' weak endings and this or that defective early quest. Oh! all profitable, no doubt, an' worth cultivatin' so long as we do not look for taste.' When I woke up at the end 'twas with these words printed in mind same as they've remained. But I couldn' figure out how this here Jane got mixed up in the diet. So, bein' of a practical mind then, in my 'teens, same as I be to-day, I stopped behind and asked him—takin' care to look bright and intelligent—who might be this Jane he'd allooded to. If you'll believe me, it turned out to be no person at all, but a way the gentry have of sayin' they're uncomfortable; same as, through some writin' chap or other, all the papers was talkin' of your belly as your Little Mary."
"Mine?"
"When I say 'yours,' o' course I mean to say 'ours'—that's to say, every one's." Rat-it-all made a semicircular sweep of the hand in front of his person.
"Something of a liberty, I should say, however many you include. What I object to in these newspapers is the publicity. . . . But, if you ask my opinion, that Extension fellow made a start with pullin' your leg."