He took my jobation in very good part, for I trust that as
a policeman I blended severity with sympathy, and promised to amend
his ways, and then added hospitably, "As perhaps you have been out
some time, constable, you might be glad of some sandwiches and a glass
of beer. If you will go down to the kitchen, I will tell the cook to
get you some." So down I went to the kitchen, and presently found
myself being entertained by an enormously fat cook. John Leech's
_Pictures from Punch_ have been familiar to me since my earliest
days. Some of his most stereotyped jokes revolved round the
unauthorised presence of policemen in kitchens, but in my very wildest
dreams it had never occurred to me that I, myself, when well past my
sixtieth year, would find myself in a policeman's uniform seated in a
London kitchen, being regaled on beer and sandwiches by a corpulent
cook, and making polite conversation to her. I hasten to disclaim the
idea that any favourable impression I may have created on the cook was
in any way due to my natural charm of manner; it was wholly to be
ascribed to the irresistible attraction the policeman's uniform which
I was wearing traditionally exercises over ladies of her profession.
Between ourselves, my brother Claud was so pleased with his Special
Constable's uniform that when a presentation portrait of himself was
offered to him he selected his policeman's uniform to be painted in,
in preference to that of a full colonel, to which he was entitled, and
his portrait can now be seen, as a white-haired and white-moustached,
but remarkably erect and alert Special Constable, seventy-five years
old.
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