I agree with him that the case is close to the line, but I have formed the opinion that there was no evidence on which the jury could find that Mrs. Barlow threw the glass at the plaintiff in the course of doing an act which she was employed to do. It was not, I think, reasonably open to the jury to infer that it was part of Mrs. Barlow's duties to keep order in the bar. The only reasonable inference is that her duties were to serve customers with drinks in the public bar and as incidental thereto to answer reasonable inquiries as to the drinks for sale there and their prices. There is no evidence that the plaintiff had ordered a glass of beer and that Mrs. Barlow threw the glass at him in the course of serving him with the beer. If the jury believed the evidence for the plaintiff, as apparently they did, the beer was first thrown at the plaintiff and then the glass. The damage to the plaintiff was done by the glass. A barmaid who throws an empty glass at a customer is not doing an act of the class which she is employed to do. To throw the beer, much less the glass, at a customer is not a mode, although an improper mode, of serving a customer with beer, and even less a mode, although an improper mode, of answering his request for a glass of beer. A barmaid is also authorized and indeed bound like any other servant to take reasonable steps to protect her employer's property. But on the plaintiff's version no property of her employer was in jeopardy. The glass was not thrown in the performance of her duty to protect her employer's property. The immediate property of her employer involved was the glass itself and its use as an implement could hardly be said to be a way of protecting it. On the defendant's version the beer (and the glass which accompanied it by accident) was thrown by Mrs. Barlow to avenge an insult to herself. On this version the assault is a merely collateral trespass and not an act done in the course of Mrs. Barlow's employment or for the purpose of protecting the property of her employer. On the plaintiff's own story that he asked her politely where he could find Mr. Deaton, the violence of the reply, in the words of Scrutton L.J. in Poland v. John Parr & Sons [1] was so excessive as to take the act out of the class of authorized acts. Assuming that it was Mrs. Barlow's duty to answer general inquiries from customers relating to the hotel, it would be impossible to find that her act was a mode, although an improper mode, of doing or performing an authorized act. But the plaintiff's story was so improbable that it is unlikely that any jury would have believed it and the jury probably believed the watered-down account given by his witnesses. Their account is in law the most favourable way of putting the case for the respondent against the appellant. But, this is not evidence, on which, in my opinion the jury could reasonably find that Mrs. Barlow was acting in the course of her employment. The only reasonable inference to be drawn from this evidence, and a fortiori from the evidence as a whole, is that the beer and glass, whether thrown at the plaintiff separately or together, were thrown to gratify the private but natural spite and rage of Mrs. Barlow caused by the plaintiff's insulting conduct. The cases relied on by counsel for the respondent, Croft v. Alison [1] ; Seymour v. Greenwood [2] ; Limpus v. London General Omnibus Co. [3] , and Ward v. General Omnibus Co. [4] were all cases where the servant misconducted himself in the course of his master's employment. In the present case the only reasonable inference from the evidence is that the glass was thrown for a purpose of Mrs. Barlow's own and was an independent act on her part not so connected with any act which she was authorized to do as to be a mode of doing it, and not an act of excess and violence in the course of her employment not justified by the occasion.