The chances of life are many, and it may doubtless sometimes lie in the narrow path of duty for a clergyman of the Church of England to pretend to be a drunken old woman; but such necessities are, I imagine, sufficiently rare to appear to many improbable.

Suppose the story got about that I had pretended to be drunk.

Suppose people did not all think it was pretence! "I lurched up, the policeman half-lifting me.

I went along weakly and quietly for about a hundred yards.

The officer evidently thought that I was too sleepy and feeble to effect an escape, and so held me lightly and easily enough.