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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12125 ***
+
+THE LADY OF THE BARGE
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+By W. W. Jacobs
+
+
+
+
+CUPBOARD LOVE
+
+
+In the comfortable living-room at Negget's farm, half parlour and half
+kitchen, three people sat at tea in the waning light of a November
+afternoon.  Conversation, which had been brisk, had languished somewhat,
+owing to Mrs. Negget glancing at frequent intervals toward the door,
+behind which she was convinced the servant was listening, and checking
+the finest periods and the most startling suggestions with a warning
+_'ssh!_
+
+"Go on, uncle," she said, after one of these interruptions.
+
+"I forget where I was," said Mr. Martin Bodfish, shortly.
+
+"Under our bed," Mr. Negget reminded him.
+
+"Yes, watching," said Mrs. Negget, eagerly.
+
+It was an odd place for an ex-policeman, especially as a small legacy
+added to his pension had considerably improved his social position, but
+Mr. Bodfish had himself suggested it in the professional hope that the
+person who had taken Mrs. Negget's gold brooch might try for further
+loot.  He had, indeed, suggested baiting the dressing-table with the
+farmer's watch, an idea which Mr. Negget had promptly vetoed.
+
+"I can't help thinking that Mrs. Pottle knows something about it," said
+Mrs. Negget, with an indignant glance at her husband.
+
+"Mrs. Pottle," said the farmer, rising slowly and taking a seat on the
+oak settle built in the fireplace, "has been away from the village for
+near a fortnit."
+
+"I didn't say she took it," snapped his wife.  "I said I believe she
+knows something about it, and so I do.  She's a horrid woman.  Look at
+the way she encouraged her girl Looey to run after that young traveller
+from Smithson's.  The whole fact of the matter is, it isn't your brooch,
+so you don't care."
+
+"I said--" began Mr. Negget.
+
+"I know what you said," retorted his wife, sharply, "and I wish you'd be
+quiet and not interrupt uncle.  Here's my uncle been in the police
+twenty-five years, and you won't let him put a word in edgeways.'
+
+"My way o' looking at it," said the ex-policeman, slowly, "is different
+to that o' the law; my idea is, an' always has been, that everybody is
+guilty until they've proved their innocence."
+
+"It's a wonderful thing to me," said Mr. Negget in a low voice to his
+pipe, "as they should come to a house with a retired policeman living in
+it.  Looks to me like somebody that ain't got much respect for the
+police."
+
+The ex-policeman got up from the table, and taking a seat on the settle
+opposite the speaker, slowly filled a long clay and took a spill from the
+fireplace.  His pipe lit, he turned to his niece, and slowly bade her go
+over the account of her loss once more.
+
+"I missed it this morning," said Mrs. Negget, rapidly, "at ten minutes
+past twelve o'clock by the clock, and half-past five by my watch which
+wants looking to.  I'd just put the batch of bread into the oven, and
+gone upstairs and opened the box that stands on my drawers to get a
+lozenge, and I missed the brooch."
+
+"Do you keep it in that box?"  asked the ex-policeman, slowly.
+
+"Always," replied his niece.  "I at once came down stairs and told Emma
+that the brooch had been stolen.  I said that I named no names, and
+didn't wish to think bad of anybody, and that if I found the brooch back
+in the box when I went up stairs again, I should forgive whoever took
+it."
+
+"And what did Emma say?"  inquired Mr. Bodfish.
+
+"Emma said a lot o' things," replied Mrs. Negget, angrily.  "I'm sure by
+the lot she had to say you'd ha' thought she was the missis and me the
+servant.  I gave her a month's notice at once, and she went straight up
+stairs and sat on her box and cried."
+
+"Sat on her box?"  repeated the ex-constable, impressively.  "Oh!"
+
+"That's what I thought," said his niece, "but it wasn't, because I got
+her off at last and searched it through and through.  I never saw
+anything like her clothes in all my life.  There was hardly a button or a
+tape on; and as for her stockings--"
+
+"She don't get much time," said Mr. Negget, slowly.
+
+"That's right; I thought you'd speak up for her," cried his wife,
+shrilly.
+
+"Look here--" began Mr. Negget, laying his pipe on the seat by his side
+and rising slowly.
+
+"Keep to the case in hand," said the ex-constable, waving him back to his
+seat again.  "Now, Lizzie."
+
+"I searched her box through and through," said his niece, "but it wasn't
+there; then I came down again and had a rare good cry all to myself."
+
+"That's the best way for you to have it," remarked Mr. Negget, feelingly.
+
+Mrs. Negget's uncle instinctively motioned his niece to silence, and
+holding his chin in his hand, scowled frightfully in the intensity of
+thought.
+
+"See a cloo?" inquired Mr. Negget, affably.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, George," said his wife, angrily;
+"speaking to uncle when he's looking like that."
+
+Mr. Bodfish said nothing; it is doubtful whether he even heard these
+remarks; but he drew a huge notebook from his pocket, and after vainly
+trying to point his pencil by suction, took a knife from the table and
+hastily sharpened it.
+
+"Was the brooch there last night?"  he inquired.
+
+"It were," said Mr. Negget, promptly.  "Lizzie made me get up just as the
+owd clock were striking twelve to get her a lozenge."
+
+"It seems pretty certain that the brooch went since then," mused Mr.
+Bodfish.
+
+"It would seem like it to a plain man," said Mr. Negget, guardedly.
+
+"I should like to see the box," said Mr. Bodfish.
+
+Mrs. Negget went up and fetched it and stood eyeing him eagerly as he
+raised the lid and inspected the contents.  It contained only a few
+lozenges and some bone studs.  Mr. Negget helped himself to a lozenge,
+and going back to his seat, breathed peppermint.
+
+"Properly speaking, that ought not to have been touched," said the
+ex-constable, regarding him with some severity.
+
+"Eh!"  said the startled farmer, putting his finger to his lips.
+
+"Never mind," said the other, shaking his head.  "It's too late now."
+
+"He doesn't care a bit," said Mrs. Negget, somewhat sadly.  "He used to
+keep buttons in that box with the lozenges until one night he gave me one
+by mistake.  Yes, you may laugh--I'm glad you can laugh."
+
+Mr. Negget, feeling that his mirth was certainly ill-timed, shook for
+some time in a noble effort to control himself, and despairing at length,
+went into the back place to recover.  Sounds of blows indicative of Emma
+slapping him on the back did not add to Mrs. Negget's serenity.
+
+"The point is," said the ex-constable, "could anybody have come into your
+room while you was asleep and taken it?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Negget, decisively.  I'm a very poor sleeper, and I'd
+have woke at once, but if a flock of elephants was to come in the room
+they wouldn't wake George.  He'd sleep through anything."
+
+"Except her feeling under my piller for her handkerchief," corroborated
+Mr. Negget, returning to the sitting-room.
+
+Mr. Bodfish waved them to silence, and again gave way to deep thought.
+Three times he took up his pencil, and laying it down again, sat and
+drummed on the table with his fingers.  Then he arose, and with bent head
+walked slowly round and round the room until he stumbled over a stool.
+
+"Nobody came to the house this morning, I suppose?"  he said at length,
+resuming his seat.
+
+"Only Mrs. Driver," said his niece.
+
+"What time did she come?"  inquired Mr. Bodfish.
+
+"Here! look here!"  interposed Mr. Negget.  "I've known Mrs. Driver
+thirty year a'most."
+
+"What time did she come?"  repeated the ex-constable, pitilessly.
+
+His niece shook her head.  "It might have been eleven, and again it might
+have been earlier," she replied.  "I was out when she came."
+
+"Out!"  almost shouted the other.
+
+Mrs. Negget nodded.
+
+"She was sitting in here when I came back."
+
+Her uncle looked up and glanced at the door behind which a small
+staircase led to the room above.
+
+"What was to prevent Mrs. Driver going up there while you were away?"  he
+demanded.
+
+"I shouldn't like to think that of Mrs. Driver," said his niece, shaking
+her head; "but then in these days one never knows what might happen.
+Never.  I've given up thinking about it.  However, when I came back, Mrs.
+Driver was here, sitting in that very chair you are sitting in now."
+
+Mr. Bodfish pursed up his lips and made another note.  Then he took a
+spill from the fireplace, and lighting a candle, went slowly and
+carefully up the stairs.  He found nothing on them but two caked rims of
+mud, and being too busy to notice Mr. Negget's frantic signalling, called
+his niece's attention to them.
+
+"What do you think of that?"  he demanded, triumphantly.
+
+"Somebody's been up there," said his niece.  "It isn't Emma, because she
+hasn't been outside the house all day; and it can't be George, because he
+promised me faithful he'd never go up there in his dirty boots."
+
+Mr. Negget coughed, and approaching the stairs, gazed with the eye of a
+stranger at the relics as Mr. Bodfish hotly rebuked a suggestion of his
+niece's to sweep them up.
+
+"Seems to me," said the conscience-stricken Mr. Negget, feebly, "as
+they're rather large for a woman."
+
+"Mud cakes," said Mr. Bodfish, with his most professional manner; "a
+small boot would pick up a lot this weather."
+
+"So it would," said Mr. Negget, and with brazen effrontery not only met
+his wife's eye without quailing, but actually glanced down at her boots.
+
+Mr. Bodfish came back to his chair and ruminated.  Then he looked up and
+spoke.
+
+"It was missed this morning at ten minutes past twelve," he said, slowly;
+"it was there last night.  At eleven o'clock you came in and found Mrs.
+Driver sitting in that chair."
+
+"No, the one you're in," interrupted his niece.
+
+"It don't signify," said her uncle.  "Nobody else has been near the
+place, and Emma's box has been searched.
+
+"Thoroughly searched," testified Mrs. Negget.
+
+"Now the point is, what did Mrs. Driver come for this morning?"  resumed
+the ex-constable.  "Did she come--"
+
+He broke off and eyed with dignified surprise a fine piece of wireless
+telegraphy between husband and wife.  It appeared that Mr. Negget sent
+off a humorous message with his left eye, the right being for some reason
+closed, to which Mrs. Negget replied with a series of frowns and staccato
+shakes of the head, which her husband found easily translatable.  Under
+the austere stare of Mr. Bodfish their faces at once regained their
+wonted calm, and the ex-constable in a somewhat offended manner resumed
+his inquiries.
+
+"Mrs. Driver has been here a good bit lately," he remarked, slowly.
+
+Mr. Negget's eyes watered, and his mouth worked piteously.
+
+"If you can't behave yourself, George--began began his wife, fiercely.
+
+"What is the matter?" demanded Mr. Bodfish.  "I'm not aware that I've
+said anything to be laughed at."
+
+"No more you have, uncle," retorted his niece; "only George is such a
+stupid.  He's got an idea in his silly head that Mrs. Driver--But it's
+all nonsense, of course."
+
+"I've merely got a bit of an idea that it's a wedding-ring, not a brooch,
+Mrs. Driver is after," said the farmer to the perplexed constable.
+
+Mr. Bodfish looked from one to the other.  "But you always keep yours on,
+Lizzie, don't you?"  he asked.
+
+"Yes, of course," replied his niece, hurriedly; "but George has always
+got such strange ideas.  Don't take no notice of him."
+
+Her uncle sat back in his chair, his face still wrinkled perplexedly;
+then the wrinkles vanished suddenly, chased away by a huge glow, and he
+rose wrathfully and towered over the match-making Mr. Negget.  "How dare
+you?" he gasped.
+
+Mr. Negget made no reply, but in a cowardly fashion jerked his thumb
+toward his wife.
+
+"Oh! George!  How can you say so?"  said the latter.
+
+"I should never ha' thought of it by myself," said the farmer; "but I
+think they'd make a very nice couple, and I'm sure Mrs. Driver thinks
+so."
+
+The ex-constable sat down in wrathful confusion, and taking up his
+notebook again, watched over the top of it the silent charges and
+countercharges of his niece and her husband.
+
+"If I put my finger on the culprit," he asked at length, turning to his
+niece, "what do you wish done to her?"
+
+Mrs. Negget regarded him with an expression which contained all the
+Christian virtues rolled into one.
+
+"Nothing," she said, softly.  "I only want my brooch back."
+
+The ex-constable shook his head at this leniency.
+
+"Well, do as you please," he said, slowly.  "In the first place, I want
+you to ask Mrs. Driver here to tea to-morrow--oh, I don't mind Negget's
+ridiculous ideas--pity he hasn't got something better to think of; if
+she's guilty, I'll soon find it out.  I'll play with her like a cat with
+a mouse.  I'll make her convict herself."
+
+"Look here!" said Mr. Negget, with sudden vigour.  "I won't have it.
+I won't have no woman asked here to tea to be got at like that.  There's
+only my friends comes here to tea, and if any friend stole anything o'
+mine, I'd be one o' the first to hush it up."
+
+"If they were all like you, George," said his wife, angrily, "where would
+the law be?"
+
+"Or the police?"  demanded Mr. Bodfish, staring at him.
+
+"I won't have it!"  repeated the farmer, loudly.  "I'm the law here, and
+I'm the police here.  That little tiny bit o' dirt was off my boots, I
+dare say.  I don't care if it was."
+
+"Very good," said Mr. Bodfish, turning to his indignant niece; "if he
+likes to look at it that way, there's nothing more to be said.  I only
+wanted to get your brooch back for you, that's all; but if he's against
+it--"
+
+"I'm against your asking Mrs. Driver here to my house to be got at," said
+the farmer.
+
+"O' course if you can find out who took the brooch, and get it back again
+anyway, that's another matter."
+
+Mr. Bodfish leaned over the table toward his niece.
+
+"If I get an opportunity, I'll search her cottage," he said, in a low
+voice.  "Strictly speaking, it ain't quite a legal thing to do, o course,
+but many o' the finest pieces of detective work have been done by
+breaking the law.  If she's a kleptomaniac, it's very likely lying about
+somewhere in the house."
+
+He eyed Mr. Negget closely, as though half expecting another outburst,
+but none being forthcoming, sat back in his chair again and smoked in
+silence, while Mrs. Negget, with a carpet-brush which almost spoke, swept
+the pieces of dried mud from the stairs.
+
+Mr. Negget was the last to go to bed that night, and finishing his pipe
+over the dying fire, sat for some time in deep thought.  He had from the
+first raised objections to the presence of Mr. Bodfish at the farm, but
+family affection, coupled with an idea of testamentary benefits, had so
+wrought with his wife that he had allowed her to have her own way.  Now
+he half fancied that he saw a chance of getting rid of him.  If he could
+only enable the widow to catch him searching her house, it was highly
+probable that the ex-constable would find the village somewhat too hot to
+hold him.  He gave his right leg a congratulatory slap as he thought of
+it, and knocking the ashes from his pipe, went slowly up to bed.
+
+He was so amiable next morning that Mr. Bodfish, who was trying to
+explain to Mrs. Negget the difference between theft and kleptomania,
+spoke before him freely.  The ex-constable defined kleptomania as a sort
+of amiable weakness found chiefly among the upper circles, and cited the
+case of a lady of title whose love of diamonds, combined with great
+hospitality, was a source of much embarrassment to her guests.
+
+For the whole of that day Mr. Bodfish hung about in the neighbourhood of
+the widow's cottage, but in vain, and it would be hard to say whether he
+or Mr. Negget, who had been discreetly shadowing him, felt the
+disappointment most.  On the day following, however, the ex-constable
+from a distant hedge saw a friend of the widow's enter the cottage, and
+a little later both ladies emerged and walked up the road.
+
+He watched them turn the corner, and then, with a cautious glance round,
+which failed, however, to discover Mr. Negget, the ex-constable strolled
+casually in the direction of the cottage, and approaching it from the
+rear, turned the handle of the door and slipped in.
+
+He searched the parlour hastily, and then, after a glance from the
+window, ventured up stairs.  And he was in the thick of his self-imposed
+task when his graceless nephew by marriage, who had met Mrs. Driver and
+referred pathetically to a raging thirst which he had hoped to have
+quenched with some of her home-brewed, brought the ladies hastily back
+again.
+
+"I'll go round the back way," said the wily Negget as they approached the
+cottage.  "I just want to have a look at that pig of yours."
+
+He reached the back door at the same time as Mr. Bodfish, and placing his
+legs apart, held it firmly against the frantic efforts of the exconstable.
+The struggle ceased suddenly, and the door opened easily just as Mrs.
+Driver and her friend appeared in the front room, and the farmer, with a
+keen glance at the door of the larder which had just closed, took a chair
+while his hostess drew a glass of beer from the barrel in the kitchen.
+
+Mr. Negget drank gratefully and praised the brew.  From beer the
+conversation turned naturally to the police, and from the police to the
+listening Mr. Bodfish, who was economizing space by sitting on the bread-
+pan, and trembling with agitation.
+
+"He's a lonely man," said Negget, shaking his head and glancing from the
+corner of his eye at the door of the larder.  In his wildest dreams he
+had not imagined so choice a position, and he resolved to give full play
+to an idea which suddenly occurred to him.
+
+"I dare say," said Mrs. Driver, carelessly, conscious that her friend was
+watching her.
+
+"And the heart of a little child," said Negget; "you wouldn't believe how
+simple he is."
+
+Mrs. Clowes said that it did him credit, but, speaking for herself, she
+hadn't noticed it.
+
+"He was talking about you night before last," said Negget, turning to his
+hostess; "not that that's anything fresh.  He always is talking about you
+nowadays."
+
+The widow coughed confusedly and told him not to be foolish.
+
+"Ask my wife," said the farmer, impressively; "they were talking about
+you for hours.  He's a very shy man is my wife's uncle, but you should
+see his face change when your name's mentioned."
+
+As a matter of fact, Mr. Bodfish's face was at that very moment taking on
+a deeper shade of crimson.
+
+"Everything you do seems to interest him," continued the farmer,
+disregarding Mrs. Driver's manifest distress; "he was asking Lizzie about
+your calling on Monday; how long you stayed, and where you sat; and after
+she'd told him, I'm blest if he didn't go and sit in the same chair!"
+
+This romantic setting to a perfectly casual action on the part of Mr.
+Bodfish affected the widow visibly, but its effect on the ex-constable
+nearly upset the bread-pan.
+
+"But here," continued Mr. Negget, with another glance at the larder, "he
+might go on like that for years.  He's a wunnerful shy man--big, and
+gentle, and shy.  He wanted Lizzie to ask you to tea yesterday."
+
+"Now, Mr. Negget," said the blushing widow.  "Do be quiet."
+
+"Fact," replied the farmer; "solemn fact, I assure you.  And he asked her
+whether you were fond of jewellery."
+
+"I met him twice in the road near here yesterday," said Mrs. Clowes,
+suddenly.  "Perhaps he was waiting for you to come out."
+
+"I dare say," replied the farmer.  "I shouldn't wonder but what he's
+hanging about somewhere near now, unable to tear himself away."
+
+Mr. Bodfish wrung his hands, and his thoughts reverted instinctively to
+instances in his memory in which charges of murder had been altered by
+the direction of a sensible judge to manslaughter.  He held his breath
+for the next words.
+
+Mr. Negget drank a little more ale and looked at Mrs. Driver.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. DRIVER FELL RACK BEORE THE EMERGING FORM OF MR.
+BODFISH]
+
+"I wonder whether you've got a morsel of bread and cheese?"  he said,
+slowly.  "I've come over that hungry--"
+
+The widow and Mr. Bodfish rose simultaneously.  It required not the brain
+of a trained detective to know that the cheese was in the larder.  The
+unconscious Mrs. Driver opened the door, and then with a wild scream fell
+back before the emerging form of Mr. Bodfish into the arms of Mrs.
+Clowes.  The glass of Mr. Negget smashed on the floor, and the farmer
+himself, with every appearance of astonishment, stared at the apparition
+open-mouthed.
+
+"Mr.--Bodfish!"  he said at length, slowly.
+
+Mr. Bodfish, incapable of speech, glared at him ferociously.
+
+"Leave him alone," said Mrs. Clowes, who was ministering to her friend.
+"Can't you see the man's upset at frightening her?  She's coming round,
+Mr. Bodfish; don't be alarmed."
+
+"Very good," said the farmer, who found his injured relative's gaze
+somewhat trying.  "I'll go, and leave him to explain to Mrs. Driver why
+he was hidden in her larder.  It don't seem a proper thing to me."
+
+"Why, you silly man," said Mrs. Clowes, gleefully, as she paused at the
+door, "that don't want any explanation.  Now, Mr. Bodfish, we're giving
+you your chance.  Mind you make the most of it, and don't be too shy."
+
+She walked excitedly up the road with the farmer, and bidding him
+good-bye at the corner, went off hastily to spread the news.  Mr. Negget
+walked home soberly, and hardly staying long enough to listen to his
+wife's account of the finding of the brooch between the chest of drawers
+and the wall, went off to spend the evening with a friend, and ended by
+making a night of it.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cupboard Love, by W.W. Jacobs
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12125 ***