Mr Myson had thought of
everything except this. Naturally it had not occurred to him that an
immense and serious effort for the general weal was going to be blocked
by a gang of tatterdemalions.
He complained with dignity to the _Signal_, and was informed
with dignity by the _Signal_ that the _Signal_ could not be
responsible for the playful antics of its boys in the streets; that, in
short, the Five Towns was a free country. In the latter proposition Mr
Myson did not concur.
After trouble in the persuasion of parents--astonishing how indifferent
the Five Towns' parent was to the loss of blood by his offspring!--a
case reached the police-court. At the hearing the _Signal_ gave a
solicitor a watching brief, and that solicitor expressed the
_Signal's_ horror of carnage. The evidence was excessively
contradictory, and the Stipendiary dismissed the summons with a good
joke. The sole definite result was that the boy whose father had
ostensibly brought the summons, got his ear torn within a quarter of an
hour of leaving the court. Boys will be boys.
Still, the _Daily_ had so little faith in human nature that it
could not believe that the _Signal_ was not secretly encouraging
its boys to be boys.
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