My companion had the habit of muttering to himself and I was relieved
when he leant over and spoke to me. He was a dry little man of middle
age, with a nervous kindly face and eyes that twinkled with the
voluntary spirit. I had seen him on summer evenings clipping his hedge
and pruning his roses, for we lived nearly opposite to each other.
Suddenly he emerged from his newspaper and said in a quick determined
way, "What this country wants, Sir, is more buttonholes. The best suits
have only two buttonholes; that is to say, only two that are
superfluous, the rest are all needed by buttons. It's a scandal, Sir!"
"Isn't there one at the bottom of the waistcoat?" I asked.
"Quite useless," he said with much energy, though smiling very kindly.
"Quite useless for the purpose. The matter," he added, "would not be so
urgent if we had more sleeves. Worse even than the dearth of buttonholes
is the lack of eligible sleeves. In peace time two sleeves may have been
sufficient; to-day ... Well, you can sympathise." He looked (still
smiling) at the khaki armlet that bound my arm and the Special
Constable's badge that nestled in my overcoat.
He had the shy decisiveness of a man who seldom spoke his mind. If
necessary I would have wrested his name from him and pretended a
relationship with his wife. But he needed no encouragement.
"At the beginning, when one was just a special constable, it didn't
matter so much. I wore my badge and my armlet when I was on duty and
sometimes when I was not. Even when I joined our Volunteer Corps I was
not seriously embarrassed. After all, one could alternate the badges and
the armlets and, at a pinch, wear them all together. Then I became an
unskilled munition worker, which meant three badges and two armlets. At
first I wore two on my overcoat and three inside. Then I would give some
of them a rest, generally to find that I was wearing the wrong ones on
the wrong occasions. Altogether it was very confusing."
"So far," I said with some sympathy, "I can follow you. I am myself an
unskilled War Office clerk; but you have forgotten Lord DERBY'S armlet,
which at the moment has the place of honour with me."
"No," he said, "I have that too. And I have another badge. I earned it
on New Year's Day."
He took off his spectacles and rubbed them mechanically. It gave him a
very detached appearance and he spoke gently, without malice.
"I have an aunt," he said, "by self-election, a most worthy woman, who
was my mother's cousin. It came to her ears that I had become a
teetotaler for the duration of the war. It appears that there is a badge
for temporary teetotalers. She brought me one. She begged me with tears
in her eyes to wear it. I remonstrated. I pointed out that if every
public and private virtue is to be symbolised in this fashion, people
with few vices and a willing heart would soon be perpetually in
fancy-dress."
"And what happened?" I asked.
"I wavered for a time and then happily I found a way out. A few days ago
it occurred to me that there must be other means, as yet untried, of
advertising one's patriotism. I saw a notice in a restaurant I sometimes
go to, 'No Germans or Austrians Employed Here.' 'Happy proprietor,' I
said, 'who can so trumpet his honesty without increasing either his
badges or his armlets!' The fact is that it set me thinking. Eventually
I hit on a plan. It was very disappointing to my aunt, but it answers
wonderfully."
"May I ask?" I said; "it might be useful."
"Oh, certainly, certainly. We have bought a little enamelled plate and
had it fixed to our gate. You may have noticed it. It has the words, 'No
Bottles.'"
* * * * *