He replies cheerfully, “No fear, mum. They’re round Hachilles; the Salvationists are on one side, a rum chap hollering against property on the other. He’s one o’ them Communists, and the pop’lace don’t cotton to them ideas; pop’lace likes gentlefolks. Lord! see ’em run to stare at the carriages o’ Drawing Room days!”
“What is the use,” thinks Bertram, “of trying to save sheep who carry their own fleeces obstinately to the shearers?”
“This is the impression,” he asks of the policeman, “which years on the London pavement gives you of the London populace?”
Policeman answers, drily, “Yessir. All the force’ll tell ye the same. London populace likes the nobs. Some on ’em yell a lot o’ revolutionary nonsense when they gets in Trafalgar Square, but, Lord bless ye, they don’t mean it.”
“They will mean it one day.”
“Well, sir, if they ever run short o’ liquor, on account of them total habstainers, they will.”
“What a view of the sovereign people!” says Bertram, “who in the Age to Come advocates voluntary total abstinence.”
“Sovereign, is it, sir? Ever seen ’em o’ Derby Day, sir?”
“Yes,” replies Bertram, curtly. He perceives that the constable is a satirist.
In sight at that moment appears a struggling form being violently propelled by two officers of the law, and followed by some yelling roughs and capering boys.