Readers will recall the small whistle from the classifieds of the twenty-first of April. It is the kind the Warden of the Sluice has been known to use, in earlier seasons, to summon the deputy in matters of consequence. A drake of no particular acquaintance found it at the south reeds late on the Sunday before that notice, undamaged but for the cord, which was missing when he found it. The article stayed in his keeping for the six weeks since, by the customary arrangement for objects of the kind, and against the Warden’s eventual reclamation.
It went back to the Warden on Friday morning at the upper sluice, in a fashion worth a little record. The occasion was the editor’s enquiry of Thursday, prompted by the finder’s letter in that day’s column, as to whether some more formal arrangement might now be in order. The Warden, approached by the editor’s intermediary at the customary hour, said he was, in the administrative sense, available, and that Friday morning at the gate would suit.
The finder presented himself at the second honk. The Warden stood at his usual post above the east channel. The exchange was short. The finder offered the whistle. The Warden took it. Both confirmed, on a single look, that the article was sound but for the missing cord. The Warden’s thanks were, by the measure of his usual thanks, generous. The finder wanted no acknowledgement past the article being back where it belonged. He left soon after.
This paper had placed itself at a respectful remove and was, in fairness, expected. Would the cord be replaced in due course? Not urgent at this hour, the Warden said. Would the whistle go back to its accustomed use? Whistles, in the matter of their use, were best left to the moments that call for them. Was he glad to have it back? The Warden adjusted his position and remarked that the morning light on the east channel was, on the whole, in good order, and nothing was added to the remark, the three questions being left to lie where they fell.
The matter would, on the face of it, end there. It is this gazette’s habit, though, to set down the day in its proper order, and the order has one more line. The Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice was seen at the gate in the early afternoon, the Warden gone, examining the whistle. It had been left on the gate-side shelf where the Warden’s effects are kept. She turned it in the light at one angle and then another for some minutes. She did not take down her notebook. She set it back on the shelf and returned to her own working place. Asked later, she would not say why she had looked at it, or what she had made of it.
The whistle is now in the Warden’s keeping. The cord is still missing. Whether a whistle returned without its cord is a matter closed or a matter merely moved is, on the present showing, not a thing to be settled here.