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on to Crogate and so to Tunbridge Wells, where there was a Toad Rock
he had heard of, but never seen. (It seemed to him this must needs be
a marvel.) And so to other towns and cities. He would walk and loiter
by the way, and sleep in inns at night, and get an odd job here and
there and talk to strange people. Perhaps he would get quite a lot of
work and prosper, and if he did not do so he would lie down in front
of a train, or wait for a warm night, and then fall into some smooth,
broad river. Not so bad as sitting down to a dentist, not nearly so
bad. And he would never open a shop any more. Never!
So the possibilities of the future presented themselves to Mr. Polly
as he lay awake at nights.
It was springtime, and in the woods so soon as one got out of reach of
the sea wind, there would be anémones and primroses.
II
A month later a leisurely and dusty tramp, plump equatorially and
slightly bald, with his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered to
a contemplative whistle, strolled along the river bank between
Uppingdon and Potwell. It was a profusely budding spring day and
greens such as God had never permitted in the world before in human
memory (though indeed they come every year), were mirrored vividly in
a mirror of equally unprecedented brown. For a time the wanderer
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