“'Ow?” demanded Mr. Grummit, with some asperity.
“There's plenty o' ways,” said the old man.
“I should find 'em out fast enough if I 'ad a bucket dropped on my back, I know.”
Mr. Grummit made a retort the feebleness of which was somewhat balanced by its ferocity, and subsided into glum silence. His back still ached, but, despite that aid to intellectual effort, the only ways he could imagine of making the constable look foolish contained an almost certain risk of hard labour for himself.
He pondered the question for a week, and meanwhile the tins—to the secret disappointment of Mr. Evans—remained untouched in his yard. For the whole of the time he went about looking, as Mrs. Grummit expressed it, as though his dinner had disagreed with him.
“I've been talking to old Bill Smith,” he said, suddenly, as he came in one night.
Mrs. Grummit looked up, and noticed with wifely pleasure that he was looking almost cheerful.
“He's given me a tip,” said Mr. Grummit, with a faint smile; “a copper mustn't come into a free-born Englishman's 'ouse unless he's invited.”
“Wot of it?” inquired his wife. “You wasn't think of asking him in, was you?”
Mr. Grummit regarded her almost play-fully. “If a copper comes in without being told to,” he continued, “he gets into trouble for it. Now d'ye see?”