Children perhaps? Had sorrow dared to touch her?

Had she forgotten altogether?...

A tramp sat by the roadside thinking, and it seemed to the man in the

passing motor car he must needs be plotting for another pot of beer.

But as a matter of fact what the tramp was saying to himself over and

over again was a variant upon a well-known Hebrew word.

Itchabod," the tramp was saying in the voice of one who reasons on

the side of the inevitable. "It's Fair Itchabod, O' Man. There's no

going back to it."

III

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon one hot day in high May when

Mr. Polly, unhurrying and serene, came to that broad bend of the river

to which the little lawn and garden of the Potwell Inn run down. He

stopped at the sight of the place with its deep tiled roof, nestling

under big trees--you never get a decently big, decently shaped tree by

the seaside--its sign towards the roadway, its sun-blistered green

bench and tables, its shapely white windows and its row of upshooting

hollyhock plants in the garden. A hedge separated it from a

buttercup-yellow meadow, and beyond stood three poplars in a group

against the sky, three exceptionally tall, graceful and harmonious

260

The History of Mr Polly