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observant windows and the cold estranged eyes.
One of his last friendships was with Rusper, the ironmonger. Rusper
took over Worthington's shop about three years after Mr. Polly opened.
He was a tall, lean, nervous, convulsive man with an upturned,
back-thrown, oval head, who read newspapers and the Review of
Reviews assiduously, had belonged to a Literary Society somewhere
once, and had some defect of the palate that at first gave his
lightest word a charm and interest for Mr. Polly. It caused a peculiar
clicking sound, as though he had something between a giggle and a
gas-meter at work in his neck.
His literary admirations were not precisely Mr. Polly's literary
admirations; he thought books were written to enshrine Great Thoughts,
and that art was pedagogy in fancy dress, he had no sense of phrase or
epithet or richness of texture, but still he knew there were books, he
did know there were books and he was full of large windy ideas of the
sort he called "Modern (kik) Thought," and seemed needlessly and
helplessly concerned about "(kik) the Welfare of the Race."
Mr. Polly would dream about that (kik) at nights.
It seemed to that undesirable mind of his that Rusper's head was the
most egg-shaped head he had ever seen; the similarity weighed upon
him; and when he found an argument growing warm with Rusper he would
say: "Boil it some more, O' Man; boil it harder!" or "Six minutes at
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