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had an appointment.‘
    ‘Indeed?‘ scoffed Sir Lancelot. ‘May I ask with whom?‘
    ‘I‘m afraid I have no intention of telling you,‘ returned Tim calmly.
    ‘A likely tale! An appointment, begad! At seven o‘clock in the morning? I‘m not at all certain I shouldn‘t consider your committal for perjury.‘
    ‘Very well,‘ Tim countered briskly, ‘it was your niece, Your Worship.‘
    ‘My niece?‘
    ‘Yes, Euphemia.‘
    ‘There! I told you the feller was lying!‘ exclaimed Sir Lancelot in triumph. ‘He doesn‘t even know her.‘
    ‘On the contrary.‘ Nothing is quite so savage as the bite of a turned worm. ‘I‘ve met her before breakfast at Witches‘ Pool every morning for three weeks, Your Worship.‘
    Sir Lancelot stared. The penny dropped, like the blade of the guillotine.
    ‘Moreover,‘ continued Tim, discovering, doubtless like St George and the Dragon, it wasn‘t half as hard as it looked once you got started, ‘I want to marry her.‘
    ‘Marry her?‘ Sir Lancelot looked blank.
    ‘I fear we are getting rather away from the facts-‘ cut in Mr Evans.
    ‘Marry her?‘ repeated Sir Lancelot. ‘Do I hear aright? Look here, you direct descendant of Sweeney Todd - ‘
    ‘Sir Lancelot! This will never do!‘ Miss Morgan-Griffiths‘ trifle bobbed excitedly. ‘You must remember you are on the Bench — ‘
    ‘You‘ve as much chance of marrying that girl as marrying Cleopatra, and she‘s been dead two thousand years.‘
    ‘Oh, the Press, the Press!‘ cried Mr Evans, blowing a despairing note on his nose.
    ‘Evans, you must get an antrostomy done on that beastly sinus,‘ snapped Sir Lancelot. ‘Listen to me, you young rake — ‘
    ‘Save us!‘ added Mr Evans looking heavenwards, this time for the dividend.
    ‘You can think yourself damn lucky the old-fashioned practice of horsewhipping,‘ Sir Lancelot continued, straining across the desk, ‘which I regard as a perfectly healthy corrective for under-ripe Bluebeards like yourself, has unfortunately dropped from the — Ahhhhhhhh!‘
    Heaven obliged its faithful servant. The senior magistrate‘s back had gone again.
    I can briefly describe the exits of our principals in this courtroom drama. Constable Rees and the Clerk bore Sir Lancelot to the retiring-room. Miss Morgan-Griffiths dabbed his forehead with her eau-de-Cologne. Mr Evans adjourned the case sine die. The reporter from the Brecknock Bugle started writing MEDICAL MAGISTRATE HAS SEIZURE ON BENCH. Constables Howells and Jenkins drove the invalid home in his Rolls.
    ‘Ye gods,‘ was all he could manage to utter on the way, ‘what is the world coining to?‘
    He screwed down the window as the car halted in his front drive.
    ‘Euphemia,‘ Sir Lancelot invited, ‘I should like a little word with you.
     

4
     
    ‘Nurse Spratt,‘ announced the Sister in Virtue Ward, ‘Matron wants you immediately.‘
    ‘Yes, Sister,‘ said Euphemia.
    I fear we should hardly recognize the girl sporting gaily by the river bank and dancing barefoot on dew-spangled lawns. Like all young ladies starting at St Swithin‘s, Euphemia had been put through the de-sexing machine they seemed to keep down in the Matron‘s office.
    ‘You may leave polishing those bedpans till you come back, Nurse.‘
    ‘Yes, Sister.‘
    ‘And Nurse James can sort your soiled bed-linen for you.,
    ‘I have already done it, Sister.‘
    ‘Oh? Well, make yourself tidy, Nurse. I don‘t want you a disgrace to the ward.‘
    ‘I hope I should never be that, Sister,‘ asserted Euphemia, dropping her eyes.
    Sister Virtue nodded. Not a woman given to generous assessment of her staff- she reduced three or four a week to tears as regularly as she ate her breakfast —she was forced to admit that Nurse Spratt‘s approach to her job like a maniac stakhanovite, combined with the girl‘s demeanour in her own presence of a particularly self-effacing worm, raised her slightly from the level of the pert gadflies they seemed