dear lady leaves so many of us, alas! not sparing him one jot or one
tittle of the hollowness of her retreating aspect.

It was all the more to Mr. Polly's taste that the thing should happen
as things happen in books.

In a resolute attempt not to get to Stamton that day, he had turned
due southward from Easewood towards a country where the abundance of
bracken jungles, lady's smock, stitchwork, bluebells and grassy
stretches by the wayside under shady trees does much to compensate the
lighter type of mind for the absence of promising "openings." He
turned aside from the road, wheeled his machine along a faintly marked
attractive trail through bracken until he came to a heap of logs
against a high old stone wall with a damaged coping and wallflower
plants already gone to seed. He sat down, balanced the straw hat on a
convenient lump of wood, lit a cigarette, and abandoned himself to
agreeable musings and the friendly observation of a cheerful little
brown and grey bird his stillness presently encouraged to approach
him. "This is All Right," said Mr. Polly softly to the little brown
and grey bird. "Business--later."

He reflected that he might go on this way for four or five years, and
then be scarcely worse off than he had been in his father's lifetime.

"Vile Business," said Mr. Polly.

Then Romance appeared. Or to be exact, Romance became audible.

Romance began as a series of small but increasingly vigorous movements
on the other side of the wall, then as a voice murmuring, then as a