IV
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 Quite out of
date I should say if you asked me."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.
