"I jest want a (decorated) word wiv you. See?--just a friendly word or

two. Just to clear up any blooming errors. That's all I want. No need

to be so (richly decorated) proud, if you are the noo bloke at

Potwell Inn. Not a bit of it. See?"

Uncle Jim was certainly not a handsome person. He was short, shorter

than Mr. Polly, with long arms and lean big hands, a thin and wiry

neck stuck out of his grey flannel shirt and supported a big head that

had something of the snake in the convergent lines of its broad knotty

brow, meanly proportioned face and pointed chin. His almost toothless

mouth seemed a cavern in the twilight. Some accident had left him with

one small and active and one large and expressionless reddish eye, and

wisps of straight hair strayed from under the blue cricket cap he wore

pulled down obliquely over the latter. He spat between his teeth and

wiped his mouth untidily with the soft side of his fist.

You got to blurry well shift," he said. "See?"

Shift!" said Mr. Polly. "How?"

'Cos the Potwell Inn's my beat. See?"

Mr. Polly had never felt less witty. "How's it your beat?" he asked.

Uncle Jim thrust his face forward and shook his open hand, bent like a

284

The History of Mr Polly