The Keepers of the King's Peace

"Please tell me the joke. This isn't the first time you have ragged Bones about 'the baby'; even Mr. Sanders has done it."

She looked across at the Commissioner with a reproving shake of her pretty head.

"Have I ragged Bones?" asked Sanders, in surprise. "I never thought I was capable of ragging anybody."

"The truth is, Pat," said her brother, "there isn't any rag about the matter. Bones adopted a piccanin."

"A child?"

"A baby about a month old. Its mother died, and some old bird of a witch-doctor was 'chopping' it when Bones appeared on the scene."

Patricia gave a little gurgle of delight and clapped her hands. "Oh, please tell me everything about it."

"It was Sanders who told her of Henry Hamilton Bones, his dire peril and his rescue; it was Hamilton who embellished the story of how Bones had given his adopted son his first bath.

"Just dropped him into a tub and stirred him round with a mop."

Soon after this Bones came blithely up from the beach and across the parade-ground, his large pipe in his mouth, his cane awhirl.

Hamilton watched him from the verandah of the Residency, and called over his shoulder to Patricia.

It had been an anxious morning for Bones, and even Hamilton was compelled to confess to himself that he had felt the strain, though he had not mentioned the fact to his sister.

Outside in the roadstead the intermediate Elder Dempster boat was waiting the return of the doctor. Bones had been to see him off. An important day, indeed, for Henry Hamilton Bones had been vaccinated.

"I think it 'took,'" said Bones gravely, answering the other's question. "I must say Henry behaved like a gentleman."

"What did Fitz say?"

(Fitzgerald, the doctor, had come in accordance with his promise to perform the operation.)

"Fitz?" said Bones, and his voice trembled. "Fitz is a cad!"

Hamilton grinned.

"He said that babies didn't feel pain, and there was Henry howling his young head off. It was horrible!"

Bones wiped his streaming brow with a large and violent bandana, and looked round cautiously.

"Not a word, Ham, to her!" he said, in a loud whisper.

"Sorry!" said Hamilton, picking up his pipe. "Her knows."

"Good gad!" said Bones, in despair, and turned to meet the girl.

"Oh, Bones!" she said reproachfully, "you never told me!"

Bones shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, dropped his pipe, blinked, spread out his hands in deprecation, and picked up his pipe.

From which it may be gathered that he was agitated.

"Dear old Miss Hamilton," he said tremulously, "I should be a horrid bounder if I denied Henry Hamilton Bones—poor little chap. If I never mentioned him, dear old sister, it is because–Ah, well, you will never understand."

He hunched his shoulders dejectedly.

"Don't be an ass, Bones. Why the dickens are you making a mystery of the thing?" asked Hamilton. "I'll certify you're a jolly good father to the brat."

"Not 'brat,' dear old sir," begged Bones. "Henry is a human being with a human heart. That boy"—he wagged his finger solemnly—"knows me the moment I go into the hut. To see him sit up an' say 'Da!' dear old sister Hamilton," he went on incoherently, "to see him open his mouth with a smile, one tooth through, an' one you can feel with your little finger—why, it's—it's wonderful, jolly old Miss Hamilton! Damn it, it's wonderful!"

"Bones!" cried the shocked girl.

"I can't help it, madame," said Bones miserably. "Fitz cut his poor little, fat little arm. Oh, Fitz is a low cad! Cut it, my dear old Patricia, mercilessly—yes, mercilessly, brutally, an' the precious little blighter didn't so much as call for the police. Good gad, it was terrible!"

His eyes were moist, and he blew his nose with great vigour.

"I'm sure it was awful," she soothed him. "May I come and see him?"

Bones raised a warning hand, and, though the habitat of the wonderful child could not have been less than half a mile away, lowered his voice.

"He's asleep—fitfully, but asleep. I've told them to call me if he has a turn for the worse, an' I'm goin' down with a gramophone after dinner, in case the old fellow wants buckin' up. But now he's asleep, thankin' you for your great kindness an' sympathy, dear old miss, in the moment of singular trial."

He took her hand and shook it heartily, tried to say something, and swallowed hard, then, turning, walked from the verandah in the direction of his hut.

The girl was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

"What a boy!" she said, half to herself.

Sanders nodded.

"Bones is very nice," he said, and she looked at him curiously.

"That is almost eloquent," she said quietly.

"I thought it was rather bald," he replied. "You see, few people really understand Bones. I thought, the first time I saw him, that he was a fool. I was wrong. Then I thought he was effeminate. I was wrong again, for he has played the man whenever he was called upon to do so. Bones is one of those rare creatures—a man with all the moral equipment of a good woman."

Her eyes were fixed on his, and for a moment they held. Then hers dropped quickly, and she flushed ever so slightly.

"I think you have defined the perfect man," she said, turning the leaves of her book.

The next morning she was admitted to an audience with that paragon of paragons, Henry Hamilton Bones.

He lived in the largest of the Houssa huts at the far end of the lines, and had for attendants two native women, for whom Bones had framed the most stringent and regimental of orders.

The girl paused in the porch of the hut to read the typewritten regulations which were fastened by drawing-pins to a green baize board.

They were bi-lingual, being in English and in coast Arabic, in which dialect Bones was something of a master. The girl wondered why they should be in English.

"Absolutely necessary, dear old lady friend," explained Bones firmly. "You've no idea what a lot of anxiety I have had. Your dear old brother—God bless him!—is a topping old sport, but with children you can't be too careful, and Ham is awfully thoughtless. There, I've said it!"