From the elevation of his barrel Edwin could survey, in the lordly and
negligent manner of people on a height, all the detail of his immediate
surroundings. Presently, in common with Hilda and the other aristocrats
of barrels, he became aware of the increased vivacity of a scene which
was passing at a little distance, near a hokey-pokey barrow. The chief
actors in the affair appeared to be a young policeman, the owner of the
hokey-pokey barrow, and an old man. It speedily grew into one of those
episodes which, occurring on the outskirts of some episode immensely
greater, draw too much attention to themselves and thereby outrage the
sense of proportion residing in most plain men, and especially in most
policemen.
"Give him a ha'porth o' hokey," said a derisive voice. "He hasn't got a
tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na'." There was
a general guffaw from the little rabble about the barrow.
"Aye! Give us some o' that!" said the piping, silly voice of the old
man. "But I mun' get to that there platform, I'm telling ye. I'm
telling all of ye." He made a senile plunge against the body of the
policeman, as against a moveless barricade, and then his hat was awry
and it fell off, and somebody lifted it into the air with a neat kick so
that it dropped on the barrow. All laughed. The old man laughed.
"Now, old sodger," said the hot policeman curtly. "None o' this! None
o' this! I advise ye civilly to be quiet; that's what I advise ye. You
can't go on th' platform without a ticket."
"Nay!" piped the old man. "Don't I tell ye I lost it down th' Sytch!"
"And where's yer rosette?"
"Never had any rosette," the old man replied. "I'm th' oldest
Sunday-schoo' teacher i' th' Five Towns. Aye! Fifty years and more
since I was Super at Turnhill Primitive Sunday schoo', and all Turnhill
knows on it. And I've got to get on that there platform. I'm th'
oldest Sunday schoo' teacher i' th' Five Towns. And I was Super--"
Two ribald youngsters intoned `Super, Super,' and another person
unceremoniously jammed the felt hat on the old man's head.
"It's nowt to me if ye was forty Supers," said the policeman, with
menacing disdain. "I've got my orders, and I'm not here to be knocked
about. Where did ye have yer last drink?"
"No wine, no beer, nor spirituous liquors have I tasted for sixty-one
years come Martinmas," whimpered the old man. And he gave another lurch
against the policeman. "My name's Shushions!" And he repeated in a
frantic treble, "My name's Shushions!"
"Go and bury thysen, owd gaffer!" a Herculean young collier advised him.
"Why," murmured Hilda, with a sharp frown, "that must be poor old Mr
Shushions from Turnhill, and they're guying him! You must stop it.
Something must be done at once."
She jumped down feverishly, and Edwin had to do likewise. He wondered
how he should conduct himself so as to emerge creditably from the
situation. He felt himself, and had always felt himself, to be the last
man in the world capable of figuring with authority in a public
altercation. He loathed public altercations. The name of Shushions
meant nothing to him; he had forgotten it, if indeed he had ever
wittingly heard it. And he did not at first recognise the old man.
Descended from the barrel, he was merely an item in the loose-packed
crowd. As, in the wake of Hilda, he pushed with false eagerness between
stubborn shoulders, he heard the bands striking up again.
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