(which is black, or dark blue, I forget which), and that's how you
know the difference. So your mind gets enlarged almost without your
knowin' it, and you feel what's at stake."

"I wonder you didn' want to enlist," said Nicky-Nan.

"I did: but I was too tall--too tall _and_ too strong," sighed the
policeman, bending his arm and causing his biceps to swell up
mountainously. "You haven't a notion how strong I am--if, for
instance, I took it into my head to catch you up and heave you over
the Quay here. Yes, yes, I am wonderfully well made! And on top of
that, Mother picked up some nonsense against soldiering off a speaker
at a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. There was nothing for it but the
Force. So here I AM. But give me the wings of a dove, and I'd join
the Royal Flyin' Corps to-morrow, where they get higher pay because
of the risk, same as with the submarines. If you ask _me_, every
Englishman's post at this moment is in the firing line."

Nicky-Nan winced, and changed the subject in haste.

"Well, it must be a great consolation to have such strength as
yours," he said pleasantly. "But I wonder--with nothing else doin',
and on a Bank Holiday too--you could manage to stay away from the
School Treat."

"Rat it all!" broke out the constable, and checked himself.
"I thought I was igsplaining to you," he went on as one who reasons
patiently with an infant, "that a man has to think of something above
an' beyond _self_ in these days."