"No doubt of it, O' Man," said Mr. Polly.

A second long pause followed, and then, much to Mr. Polly's great
relief, Johnson moved towards the door.

Afterwards Mr. Polly went for a solitary walk in the evening light,
and as he walked, suddenly his dead father became real to him. He
thought of things far away down the perspective of memory, of jolly
moments when his father had skylarked with a wildly excited little
boy, of a certain annual visit to the Crystal Palace pantomime, full
of trivial glittering incidents and wonders, of his father's dread
back while customers were in the old, minutely known shop. It is
curious that the memory which seemed to link him nearest to the dead
man was the memory of a fit of passion. His father had wanted to get a
small sofa up the narrow winding staircase from the little room behind
the shop to the bedroom above, and it had jammed. For a time his
father had coaxed, and then groaned like a soul in torment and given
way to blind fury, had sworn, kicked and struck at the offending piece
of furniture and finally wrenched it upstairs, with considerable
incidental damage to lath and plaster and one of the castors. That
moment when self-control was altogether torn aside, the shocked
discovery of his father's perfect humanity, had left a singular
impression on Mr. Polly's queer mind. It was as if something
extravagantly vital had come out of his father and laid a warmly
passionate hand upon his heart. He remembered that now very vividly,
and it became a clue to endless other memories that had else been
dispersed and confusing.

A weakly wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round