it will be a Warning to you. Don't expect Men of your Position to come

up before us. Very Regrettable Affair. Eh?"

He addressed the latter enquiry to his two colleagues.

Exactly, exactly," said the colleague to the right.

Er--(kik)," said Mr. Rusper.

VII

But the disgust that overshadowed Mr. Polly's being as he sat upon the

stile, had other and profounder justification than his quarrel with

Rusper and the indignity of appearing before the county bench. He was

for the first time in his business career short with his rent for the

approaching quarter day, and so far as he could trust his own bandling

of figures he was sixty or seventy pounds on the wrong side of

solvency. And that was the outcome of fifteen years of passive

endurance of dulness throughout the best years of his life! What would

Miriam say when she learnt this, and was invited to face the prospect

of exile--heaven knows what sort of exile!--from their present home?

She would grumble and scold and become limply unhelpful, he knew, and

none the less so because he could not help things. She would say he

ought to have worked harder, and a hundred such exasperating pointless

things. Such thoughts as these require no aid from undigested cold

217

The History of Mr Polly