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Those three months passed all too quickly; months of sunshine and
warmth, of varied novel exertion in the open air, of congenial
experiences, of interest and wholesome food and successful digestion,
months that browned Mr. Polly and hardened him and saw the beginnings
of his beard, months marred only by one anxiety, an anxiety Mr. Polly
did his utmost to suppress. The day of reckoning was never mentioned,
it is true, by either the plump woman or himself, but the name of
Uncle Jim was written in letters of glaring silence across their
intercourse. As the term of that respite drew to an end his anxiety
increased, until at last it even trenched upon his well-earned sleep.
He had some idea of buying a revolver. At last he compromised upon a
small and very foul and dirty rook rifle which he purchased in Lammam
under a pretext of bird scaring, and loaded carefully and concealed
under his bed from the plump woman's eye.
September passed away, October came.
And at last came that night in October whose happenings it is so
difficult for a sympathetic historian to drag out of their proper
nocturnal indistinctness into the clear, hard light of positive
statement. A novelist should present characters, not vivisect them
publicly....
The best, the kindliest, if not the justest course is surely to leave
untold such things as Mr. Polly would manifestly have preferred
untold.
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