"I should keep it if I was you; unless the owner offers a reward for it.
It'll hold enough water for your wants."

Mr. Grummit flung indoors and, after wasting some time concocting
impossible measures of retaliation with his sympathetic partner, went off
to discuss affairs with his intimates at the _Bricklayers' Arms_. The
company, although unanimously agreeing that Mr. Evans ought to be boiled,
were miserably deficient in ideas as to the means by which such a
desirable end was to be attained.

"Make 'im a laughing-stock, that's the best thing," said an elderly
labourer. "The police don't like being laughed at."

"'Ow?" demanded Mr. Grummit, with some asperity.

"There's plenty o' ways," said the old man.

"I should find 'em out fast enough if I 'ad a bucket dropped on my back,
I know."

Mr. Grummit made a retort the feebleness of which was somewhat balanced
by its ferocity, and subsided into glum silence. His back still ached,
but, despite that aid to intellectual effort, the only ways he could
imagine of making the constable look foolish contained an almost certain
risk of hard labour for himself.

He pondered the question for a week, and meanwhile the tins--to the
secret disappointment of Mr. Evans--remained untouched in his yard. For
the whole of the time he went about looking, as Mrs. Grummit expressed
it, as though his dinner had disagreed with him.