"good-morning" every morning, and for a period it seemed to him the

most significant event in his day. When she said, "I do hope it will

be fine to-morrow," he felt it marked an epoch. He had had no sisters,

and was innately disposed to worship womankind. But he did not betray

as much to Platt and Parsons.

To Platt and Parsons he affected an attitude of seasoned depravity

towards womankind. Platt and Parsons were his contemporary apprentices

in departments of the drapery shop, and the three were drawn together

into a close friendship by the fact that all their names began with P.

They decided they were the Three Ps, and went about together of an

evening with the bearing of desperate dogs. Sometimes, when they had

money, they went into public houses and had drinks. Then they would

become more desperate than ever, and walk along the pavement under the

gas lamps arm in arm singing. Platt had a good tenor voice, and had

been in a church choir, and so he led the singing; Parsons had a

serviceable bellow, which roared and faded and roared again very

wonderfully; Mr. Polly's share was an extraordinary lowing noise, a

sort of flat recitative which he called "singing seconds." They would

have sung catches if they had known how to do it, but as it was they

sang melancholy music hall songs about dying soldiers and the old

folks far away.

They would sometimes go into the quieter residential quarters of Port

Burdock, where policemen and other obstacles were infrequent, and

really let their voices soar like hawks and feel very happy. The dogs

The History of Mr Polly