Tompkins always blamed Mrs. Mimms for the sealing up of the village pump, and had never spoken a good word about her since. The vicar was greatly put out.
"Tut--tut!" he said; "arrested! shot! Nonsense. Mrs. Mimms is a most estimable lady."
"I'm not so sure about that," said Hankly. "Those boys have been watching her lately, and there are several things which look suspicious."
I suppose the vicar and I showed our surprise. Hankly went on to explain.
"She gives the boys peaches and grapes," he said, "and cakes and meringues. Now I put it to you--the apples of course I understand. I might give a boy an apple myself, but I put it to you, vicar, would anybody give boys like that hothouse grapes and peaches unless--well, unless there was something to conceal. It's not a natural thing to do."
"Now I come to think of it," said the vicar, "I did meet one of them yesterday with a peach in his fist."
"There you are," said Hankly triumphantly, "and, anyhow, the police inspector is coming over to-day to look into the matter."
Mrs. Mimms was not actually arrested. The police inspector--acting on information received from the Boy Scouts, Tompkins, and indeed almost every one in the village--made a lot of inquiries about her. He did not succeed in finding out why she called herself "the Honourable," but the questions he asked her made her so angry that she packed up her trunks and left the village at once.
I met the Colonel the day after she left, and told him I was afraid we should all miss her. The Colonel chuckled in a self-satisfied way.
"I told you we ought to get rid of her," he said, "and we have."
"You don't mean to say you think she was really a spy?" I said.
"She was a good deal worse," said the Colonel; "she was a public nuisance."
Later on the Colonel took a kindlier view of Mrs. Mimms.
"Only for her," he said to me a week ago, "we shouldn't have had Boy Scouts here. We have quite a good company now. She did us that much good, anyhow."
The Colonel did her no more than bare justice. Our Scouts, though they have caught no more spies, have improved the general tone of the village. The Colonel is their commanding officer, and, though I do not say so in public, they have done him a lot of good.
