Chapter the Fourth

Mr. Polly an Orphan

Then a great change was brought about in the life of Mr. Polly by the

death of his father. His father had died suddenly--the local

practitioner still clung to his theory that it was imagination he

suffered from, but compromised in the certificate with the

appendicitis that was then so fashionable--and Mr. Polly found himself

heir to a debateable number of pieces of furniture in the house of his

cousin near Easewood Junction, a family Bible, an engraved portrait of

Garibaldi and a bust of Mr. Gladstone, an invalid gold watch, a gold

locket formerly belonging to his mother, some minor jewelry and

bric-a-brac, a quantity of nearly valueless old clothes and an

insurance policy and money in the bank amounting altogether to the sum

of three hundred and ninety-five pounds.

Mr. Polly had always regarded his father as an immortal, as an eternal

fact, and his father being of a reserved nature in his declining years

had said nothing about the insurance policy. Both wealth and

bereavement therefore took Mr. Polly by surprise and found him a

little inadequate. His mother's death had been a childish grief and

The History of Mr Polly