Wimbledon's open common, a trailing garrulous company walking about a

solemnly happy host, to wonderful cold meat and salad at the Roebuck,

a bowl of punch, punch! and a bill to correspond; but now it was a

weekday, and he went down to Easewood with his bag and portmanteau in

a solitary compartment, and looked out of the window upon a world in

which every possible congenial seemed either toiling in a situation

or else looking for one with a gnawing and hopelessly preoccupying

anxiety. He stared out of the window at the exploitation roads of

suburbs, and rows of houses all very much alike, either emphatically

and impatiently to let or full of rather busy unsocial people.

Near Wimbledon he had a glimpse of golf links, and saw two elderly

gentlemen who, had they chosen, might have been gentlemen of grace

and leisure, addressing themselves to smite little hunted white balls

great distances with the utmost bitterness and dexterity. Mr. Polly

could not understand them.

Every road he remarked, as freshly as though he had never observed it

before, was bordered by inflexible palings or iron fences or severely

disciplined hedges. He wondered if perhaps abroad there might be

beautifully careless, unenclosed high roads. Perhaps after all the

best way of taking a holiday is to go abroad.

He was haunted by the memory of what was either a half-forgotten

picture or a dream; a carriage was drawn up by the wayside and four

beautiful people, two men and two women graciously dressed, were

dancing a formal ceremonious dance full of bows and curtseys, to the

The History of Mr Polly