Tue hald-headed man entered the barber's shop. He was not exactly gliald, for he had one solitary, stubborn hair that still grew in the centre of his head.
The customer sank back in the chair.
"Haircut," he said contentedly.
The barber gulped. Then he shrugged and picked up his scissors. He was about to work on the single hair, when he felt the customer's hand on his arm. With the scissors in mid-air, the barber paused.
"Yes" he murmured.
The customer cleared his throat.
"Don't spare the scissors" he advised. "I don't care to be running to the barber every week!"
Constable Wife Mystery Tuar was a tantalizing flash from the police court. People were told that the witness said that a constable approached the witness' car, then saw the witness' wife, and then walked away. And that was all.
But just why did the constable walk away?
Was it because he felt his suspenders give way and knew he would look such an ass with the things flapping over his boots?
Was it because, for years, he hed wanted to walk away from a wife in a car, and suddenly took the bit between his teeth and did it?
Speculation is idle. Perhaps the constable may rise, one day, to the top of Scotland Yard. He may reveal the real, the grim truth in his intriguing memoirs, Meanwhile Mr. Basil Boofuls has his own characteristic theory. He thinks the constable walked away because with wonderful sympathy, he recognized the wife as the owner of a daggle.
And he realized that the daggle would know when she got home, just from her expression, ihat she had been spoken to by a constable. And he knew how that would go to the daggle's heart, making it give a sob or two, making it lower its lashes over misty doggy eyes.
And he simply could not bear it. He turned away and raced for the station, where he flung himself on the sergeant's shoulder and burst into tears.
After which he bathed his peepers in cold water, had a sniff of eau-de-Cologne and resumed his duties.
Or so Mr. Boofuls imagines (to the inexpressible disgust of his own daggle, Mr. Stench),
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.