And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged and heaved the rank and file of the tribe of Rubberers. In two bodies they were, with the grosgrain carpet and cops with clubs between. They crowded like cattle, they fought, they pressed and surged, and swayed and trampled one another to see a bit of a girl in a white veil acquire licence to go through a man’s pockets while he sleeps.

But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and bridegroom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm, and alarm brought about search, and they were not found. And then two big policemen took a hand, and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding-ring in its vest pocket, and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet’s edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.

William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the rose-decked church.

Rubber will out.