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Chapter the First
Beginnings, and the Bazaar
I
"Hole!" said Mr. Polly, and then for a change, and with greatly
increased emphasis: "'Ole!" He paused, and then broke out with one of
his private and peculiar idioms. "Oh! Beastly Silly Wheeze of a Hole!"
He was sitting on a stile between two threadbare looking fields, and
suffering acutely from indigestion.
He suffered from indigestion now nearly every afternoon in his life,
but as he lacked introspection he projected the associated discomfort
upon the world. Every afternoon he discovered afresh that life as a
whole and every aspect of life that presented itself was "beastly."
And this afternoon, lured by the delusive blueness of a sky that was
blue because the wind was in the east, he had come out in the hope of
snatching something of the joyousness of spring. The mysterious
alchemy of mind and body refused, however, to permit any joyousness
whatever in the spring.
He had had a little difficulty in finding his cap before he came out.
He wanted his cap--the new golf cap--and Mrs. Polly must needs fish
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