must have a couple to stand on guard while the working parties are going on.”
I talked to the vicar, Hankly, and the Colonel about this. I did not see how we could possibly provide Mrs. Mimms with Boy Scouts, for there were none in the parish. The vicar said he was sorry that he had not started the orgunisation long ago, but supposed it was too late to do so now. To my surprise the Colonel, who up to that time had been getting angrier and angrier with Mrs. Mimms, took her side and said that if she wanted Boy Scents she ought to have them. He proposed that we should enrol four choir boys at once, and offered to buy uniforms for them himself. The vicar was a little doubtful, but Hankly and I backed up the Colonel. We were very tired of the constant committee meetings, and we hoped that if Mrs. Mimms got really interested in Boy Scouts she might let us alone. We acted promptly, and in a week had four boys ready to stand on guard at the doors of the Manor House.
The Colonel gave them a talking to at their first parade. He impressed on them the fact that discipline and strict obedience to orders are the essence of a military manhood. He quoted Tennyson, and made the boys repeat the lines after him:
He succeeded in inspiring them with a tremendous sense of their own importance. My idea was that he was trying to prepare them for having their knees kissed by Mrs. Mimms.
For a time everything went well. The boys got off going to school and were immensely pleased. Mis. Mimms fed them with dainties at odd hours of the day, and always had a basket of apples in the porch from which they could help themselves. So far as I knew she never attempted to kiss either their knees or any other part of them. The Colonel kept on exhorting them. He paid them a visit every morning, and insisted on their reporting themselves at his house when they went off duty in the evening.
About a fortnight after the boys first went on guard Mrs. Mimms complained to the vicar that she had found one of them concealed under the dining-room table while she was at luncheon. She said that she did not like the feeling that she might kick a boy every time she stretched her leg while she was at meals. The vicar, of course, promised to speak to the boy.
The next day Mrs. Mimms made another complaint. One of the
