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.


V

And now Mr. Polly began to lead a divided life. With the Johnsons he
professed to be inclined, but not so conclusively inclined as to be
inconvenient, to get a shop for himself, to be, to use the phrase he
preferred, "looking for an opening." He would ride off in the
afternoon upon that research, remarking that he was going to "cast a