The History of Mr. Polly

It was past ten when Mr. Polly found himself riding back towards Easewood in a broad moonlight with a little Japanese lantern dangling from his handle bar and making a fiery circle of pinkish light on and round about his front wheel.  He was mightily pleased with himself and the day.  There had been four-ale to drink at supper mixed with gingerbeer, very free and jolly in a jug.  No shadow fell upon the agreeable excitement of his mind until he faced the anxious and reproachful face of Johnson, who had been sitting up for him, smoking and trying to read the odd volume of “Purchas his Pilgrimes,”—­about the monk who went into Sarmatia and saw the Tartar carts.

“Not had an accident, Elfrid?” said Johnson.

The weakness of Mr. Polly’s character came out in his reply.  “Not much,” he said.  “Pedal got a bit loose in Stamton, O’ Man.  Couldn’t ride it.  So I looked up the cousins while I waited.”

“Not the Larkins lot?”

“Yes.”

Johnson yawned hugely and asked for and was given friendly particulars.  “Well,” he said, “better get to bed.  I have been reading that book of yours—­rum stuff.  Can’t make it out quite.  Quite out of date I should say if you asked me.”

“That’s all right, O’ Man,” said Mr. Polly.

“Not a bit of use for anything I can see.”

“Not a bit.”

“See any shops in Stamton?”

“Nothing to speak of,” said Mr. Polly.  “Goo-night, O’ Man.”

Before and after this brief conversation his mind ran on his cousins very warmly and prettily in the vein of high spring.  Mr. Polly had been drinking at the poisoned fountains of English literature, fountains so unsuited to the needs of a decent clerk or shopman, fountains charged with the dangerous suggestion that it becomes a man of gaiety and spirit to make love, gallantly and rather carelessly.  It seemed to him that evening to be handsome and humorous and practicable to make love to all his cousins.  It wasn’t that he liked any of them particularly, but he liked something about them.  He liked their youth and femininity, their resolute high spirits and their interest in him.

They laughed at nothing and knew nothing, and Minnie had lost a tooth and Annie screamed and shouted, but they were interesting, intensely interesting.

And Miriam wasn’t so bad as the others.  He had kissed them all and had been kissed in addition several times by Minnie,—­“oscoolatory exercise.”

He buried his nose in his pillow and went to sleep—­to dream of anything rather than getting on in the world, as a sensible young man in his position ought to have done.