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in the late afternoon, armed with a large rough-hewn stake, should
have mistaken the bending form of one of those campers--who was
pulling a few onions by permission in the garden--for Mr. Polly's, and
crept upon it swiftly and silently and smitten its wide invitation
unforgettably and unforgiveably. It was an error impossible to
explain; the resounding whack went up to heaven, the cry of amazement,
and Mr. Polly emerged from the inn armed with the frying-pan he was
cleaning, to take this reckless assailant in the rear. Uncle Jim,
realising his error, fled blaspheming into the arms of the other two
campers, who were returning from the village with butcher's meat and
groceries. They caught him, they smacked his face with steak and
punched him with a bursting parcel of lump sugar, they held him though
he bit them, and their idea of punishment was to duck him. They were
hilarious, strong young stockbrokers' clerks, Territorials and
seasoned boating men; they ducked him as though it was romping, and all
that Mr. Polly had to do was to pick up lumps of sugar for them and wipe
them on his sleeve and put them on a plate, and explain that Uncle Jim
was a notorious bad character and not quite right in his head.
"
Got a regular obsession that the Missis is his Aunt," said Mr. Polly,
expanding it. "Perfect noosance he is."
But he caught a glance of Uncle Jim's eye as he receded before the
campers' urgency that boded ill for him, and in the night he had a
disagreeable idea that perhaps his luck might not hold for the third
occasion.
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