The ball had furrowed the fleshy part of his left arm just below the shoulder. Rosamond was obliged to remove his coat, cut the sleeve of his shirt, and bathe and dress the wound herself without assistance from the constable. That worthy stood by, twirling a battered straw hat and staring open-eyed and open-mouthed at the contents of the living room. He refused point blank to take any surgical responsibility.
“Hi’m a constable, and Hi ain’t no bloomin’ doctor. Hi drills ’oles in yer; Hi don’t stop ’em hup again,” was his pithy and definite retort, when besought to put the pins in the bandage while Mrs. Mearely held it secure. In the end she was obliged to tie it, achieving quite a pretty bow-knot which she spread out daintily and patted into place, feeling a natural pride in it which she was not inclined to conceal.
While refusing to put a finger to the business, himself, the constable was willing to make remarks and to offer criticisms, such as:
“Hi’ve ’eard of gangrene a-settin’ in hafter a shot. Hi shouldn’t be surprised if ’e’d take to gangrene, ’im bein’ of that dark, bilious complexion. A dark-skinned man is bound to be a bilious man. Hi never knowed it to fail.”
Or:
“If Hi’d ben doin’ the job, Hi’d ’ave done it very different. But hit’s not my place to nuss. Wot’s your name (’nyme’ he called it), by the w’y?”
“Mrs. Mearely.” shortly. She already detested that constable.
He was a broad, slow person of forty or more, with a dragging walk that, at first sight, seemed to be lameness; but save for self-importance and a weary disgust at the world, his limbs were whole. His head was as large as the average headstone, and of somewhat the same shape; and though it was not of the same material, it was thicker and looked as hard. He wore a gray linen duster, soiled and much crumpled, from which he occasionally filliped bits of dried mud with his thumb nail. He spoke in the deliberate, very positive accents of a man who knows he has never made a mistake of any kind, even by accident, in all his life. He forbore to argue with Mrs. Mearely when she accused him of a callous soul, anent the bandaging. He simply put back the flap of his duster and polished his badge with his cuff. The inference was plain. She might have riches; but he was the Law.
“Why doesn’t Dr. Wells come? I am so frightened about you!” She burst out presently, after the Law had expressed more of his uncomforting views.
“But it’s nothing,” the victim protested.