Retired boatswain George Benn keeps proposing to Mrs. Waters, the landlady of a country inn, and keeps being refused. His solution is to hire an out-of-work ex-soldier to break into the inn at night so that Benn can heroically rescue her, but the landlady proves a good deal more capable than either of them expected.
One of Jacobs’s best-loved comic tales, later turned into an opera by Ethel Smyth. Download the free EPUB.