turned aside from the road, wheeled his machine along a faintly marked

attractive trail through bracken until he came to a heap of logs

against a high old stone wall with a damaged coping and wallflower

plants already gone to seed. He sat down, balanced the straw hat on a

convenient lump of wood, lit a cigarette, and abandoned himself to

agreeable musings and the friendly observation of a cheerful little

brown and grey bird his stillness presently encouraged to approach

him. "This is All Right," said Mr. Polly softly to the little brown

and grey bird. "Business--later."

He reflected that he might go on this way for four or five years, and

then be scarcely worse off than he had been in his father's lifetime.

Vile Business," said Mr. Polly.

Then Romance appeared. Or to be exact, Romance became audible.

Romance began as a series of small but increasingly vigorous movements

on the other side of the wall, then as a voice murmuring, then as a

falling of little fragments on the hither side and as ten pink finger

tips, scarcely apprehended before Romance became startling and

emphatically a leg, remained for a time a fine, slender, actively

struggling limb, brown stockinged and wearing a brown toe-worn shoe,

and then--. A handsome red-haired girl wearing a short dress of blue

linen was sitting astride the wall, panting, considerably disarranged

by her climbing, and as yet unaware of Mr. Polly....

116

The History of Mr Polly