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The hero of the occasion, the centre of interest, was Mr. Polly. For
he had not only caused the fire by upsetting a lighted lamp, scorching
his trousers and narrowly escaping death, as indeed he had now
explained in detail about twenty times, but he had further thought at
once of that amiable but helpless old lady next door, had shown the
utmost decision in making his way to her over the yard wall of the
Royal Fishbourne Hotel, and had rescued her with persistence and
vigour in spite of the levity natural to her years. Everyone thought
well of him and was anxious to show it, more especially by shaking his
hand painfully and repeatedly. Mr. Rumbold, breaking a silence of
nearly fifteen years, thanked him profusely, said he had never
understood him properly and declared he ought to have a medal. There
seemed to be a widely diffused idea that Mr. Polly ought to have a
medal. Hinks thought so. He declared, moreover, and with the utmost
emphasis, that Mr. Polly had a crowded and richly decorated
interior--or words to that effect. There was something apologetic in
this persistence; it was as if he regretted past intimations that Mr.
Polly was internally defective and hollow. He also said that Mr. Polly
was a "white man," albeit, as he developed it, with a liver of the
deepest chromatic satisfactions.
Mr. Polly wandered centrally through it all, with his face washed and
his hair carefully brushed and parted, looking modest and more than a
little absent-minded, and wearing a pair of black dress trousers
belonging to the manager of the Temperance Hotel,--a larger man than
himself in every way.
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