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There is nothing so good in all the world for melancholia as walking,
and the exercise of the imagination in planning something presently to
be done, and soon the wrathful wretchedness had vanished from Mr.
Polly's face. He would have to do the thing secretly and elaborately,
because otherwise there might be difficulties about the life
insurance. He began to scheme how he could circumvent that
difficulty....
He took a long walk, for after all what is the good of hurrying back
to shop when you are not only insolvent but very soon to die? His
dinner and the east wind lost their sinister hold upon his soul, and
when at last he came back along the Fishbourne High Street, his face
was unusually bright and the craving hunger of the dyspeptic was
returning. So he went into the grocer's and bought a ruddily decorated
tin of a brightly pink fishlike substance known as "Deep Sea Salmon."
This he was resolved to consume regardless of cost with vinegar and
salt and pepper as a relish to his supper.
He did, and since he and Miriam rarely talked and Miriam thought
honour and his recent behaviour demanded a hostile silence, he ate
fast, and copiously and soon gloomily. He ate alone, for she
refrained, to mark her sense of his extravagance. Then he prowled into
the High Street for a time, thought it an infernal place, tried his
pipe and found it foul and bitter, and retired wearily to bed.
He slept for an hour or so and then woke up to the contemplation of
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