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For a time he cherished a design of hunting up Parsons, getting him to
throw up his situation, and going with him to Stratford-on-Avon and
Shrewsbury and the Welsh mountains and the Wye and a lot of places
like that, for a really gorgeous, careless, illimitable old holiday of
a month. But alas! Parsons had gone from the St. Paul's Churchyard
outfitter's long ago, and left no address.
Mr. Polly tried to think he would be almost as happy wandering alone,
but he knew better. He had dreamt of casual encounters with
delightfully interesting people by the wayside--even romantic
encounters. Such things happened in Chaucer and "Bocashiew," they
happened with extreme facility in Mr. Richard Le Gallienne's very
detrimental book, The Quest of the Golden Girl, which he had read at
Canterbury, but he had no confidence they would happen in England--to
him.
When, a month later, he came out of the Clapham side door at last into
the bright sunshine of a fine London day, with a dazzling sense of
limitless freedom upon him, he did nothing more adventurous than order
the cabman to drive to Waterloo, and there take a ticket for Easewood.
He wanted--what did he want most in life? I think his distinctive
craving is best expressed as fun--fun in companionship. He had already
spent a pound or two upon three select feasts to his fellow
assistants, sprat suppers they were, and there had been a great and
very successful Sunday pilgrimage to Richmond, by Wandsworth and
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