At this moment a little stone hit him sharply on the hand.

“Who threw that stone?” said Mr. Lavender.  “Let him stand out.”

The culprit, no other indeed than he who had thrown the hat in, and not fetched it out for a shilling, thus menaced with discovery made use of a masterly device, and called out loudly: 

“Pro-German!”

Such was the instinctive patriotism of the crowd that the cry was taken up in several quarters; and for the moment Mr. Lavender remained speechless from astonishment.  The cries of “Pro-German!” increased in volume, and a stone hitting her on the nose caused Blink to utter a yelp; Mr. Lavender’s eyes blazed.

“Huns!” he cried; “Huns!  I am coming out.”

With this prodigious threat he emerged from the pond at the very moment that a car scattered the throng, and a well-known voice said: 

“Well, sir, you ‘ave been goin’ it!”

“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender, “don’t speak to me!”

“Get in.”

“Never!”

“Pro-Germans!” yelled the crowd.

“Get in!” repeated Joe.

And seizing Mr. Lavender as if collaring him at football, he knocked off his hat, propelled him into the car, banged the door, mounted, and started at full speed, with Blink leaping and barking in front of them.

Debouching from Piave Parade into Bottomley Lane he drove up it till the crowd was but a memory before he stopped to examine the condition his master.  Mr. Lavender was hanging out of window, looking back, and shivering violently.

“Well, sir,” said Joe.  “I don’t think!”

“Joe,” said Mr. Lavender that crowd ought not to be at large.  They were manifestly Huns.

“The speakin’s been a bit too much for you, sir,” said Joe.  “But you’ve got it off your chest, anyway.”

Mr. Lavender regarded him for a moment in silence; then putting his hand to his throat, said hoarsely: 

“No, on my chest, I think, Joe.  All public speakers do.  It is inseparable from that great calling.”

“’Alf a mo’!” grunted Joe, diving into the recesses beneath the driving-seat. “’Ere, swig that off, sir.”

Mr. Lavender raised the tumbler of fluid to his mouth, and drank it off; only from the dregs left on his moustache did he perceive that it smelled of rum and honey.

“Joe,” he said reproachfully, “you have made me break my pledge.”

Joe smiled.  “Well, what are they for, sir?  You’ll sleep at ’ome to-night.”

“Never,” said Mr. Lavender.  “I shall sleep at High Barnet; I must address them there tomorrow on abstinence during the war.”

“As you please, sir.  But try and ’ave a nap while we go along.”  And lifting Blink into the car, where she lay drenched and exhausted by excitement, with the petal of a purple flower clinging to her black nose, he mounted to his seat and drove off.  Mr. Lavender, for years unaccustomed to spirituous liquor, of which he had swallowed nearly half a pint neat, passed rapidly into a state of coma.  Nor did he fully regain consciousness till he awoke in bed the next morning.