V
Hinks, the saddler, two shops further down the street, was a different
case. Hinks was the aggressor--practically.
Hinks was a sporting man in his way, with that taste for checks in
costume and tight trousers which is, under Providence, so mysteriously
and invariably associated with equestrian proclivities. At first Mr.
Polly took to him as a character, became frequent in the God's
Providence Inn under his guidance, stood and was stood drinks and
concealed a great ignorance of horses until Hinks became urgent for
him to play billiards or bet.
Then Mr. Polly took to evading him, and Hinks ceased to conceal his
opinion that Mr. Polly was in reality a softish sort of flat.
He did not, however, discontinue conversation with Mr. Polly; he would
come along to him whenever he appeared at his door, and converse about
sport and women and fisticuffs and the pride of life with an air of
extreme initiation, until Mr. Polly felt himself the faintest
underdeveloped intimation of a man that had ever hovered on the verge
of non-existence.
So he invented phrases for Hinks' clothes and took Rusper, the
ironmonger, into his confidence upon the weaknesses of Hinks. He
called him the "Chequered Careerist," and spoke of his patterned legs
as "shivery shakys." Good things of this sort are apt to get round to
people.
He was standing at his door one day, feeling bored, when Hinks
appeared down the street, stood still and regarded him with a strange
malignant expression for a space.
Mr. Polly waved a hand in a rather belated salutation.
Mr. Hinks spat on the pavement and appeared to reflect. Then he came
towards Mr. Polly portentously and paused, and spoke between his teeth
in an earnest confidential tone.
"You been flapping your mouth about me, I'm told," he said.
Mr. Polly felt suddenly spiritless. "Not that I know of," he answered.
"Not that you know of, be blowed! You been flapping your mouth."
"Don't see it," said Mr. Polly.
"Don't see it, be blowed! You go flapping your silly mouth about me
and I'll give you a poke in the eye. See?"
Mr. Hinks regarded the effect of this coldly but firmly, and spat
again.
"Understand me?" he enquired.
"Don't recollect," began Mr. Polly.
"Don't recollect, be blowed! You flap your mouth a dam sight too much.
This place gets more of your mouth than it wants.... Seen this?"
And Mr. Hinks, having displayed a freckled fist of extraordinary size
and pugginess in an ostentatiously familiar manner to Mr. Polly's
close inspection by sight and smell, turned it about this way and that
and shaken it gently for a moment or so, replaced it carefully in his
pocket as if for future use, receded slowly and watchfully for a pace,
and then turned away as if to other matters, and ceased to be even in
outward seeming a friend....
