"You're very kind, I'm sure," murmured Mrs. Middlemore, inclining, with the proverbial fickleness of her sex, now to Constable, Nightingale and now to Constable Wigg.
"It's the least I can do," proceeded Constable Wigg, addressing himself solely to his hostess, "after the way I've been treated here. Not for the last time, I hope."
"Not by a many," said Mrs. Middlemore, smirking at the flatterer, "if it remains with me."
"You're monarch of all you survey, ma'am," observed the wily Wigg, smirking back at her, "and remain with you it must, as long as you remain single."
"Oh, Mr. Wigg!"
"It's nobody's fault but your own if you do; there's not many as can pick and choose, but you're one as can. Perhaps you're hard to please, ma'am----"
"I ain't," said Mrs. Middlemore, so energetically that Constable Nightingale began to think it time to interfere.
"You're forgetting the red cat, Wigg," he said.
"Not at all," said Constable Wigg, blandly; "I'm coming to it, but I don't forget that Mrs. Middlemore has nerves. It amounts to this, ma'am. I've read a bit in my time, and I'm going to give you--and Nightingale, if he ain't too proud--the benefit of it. You did see a red cat, ma'am."
"Did I?" said Mrs. Middlemore, looking around with a shiver.