Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/207

 Mr. Polly was under restraint of little Clamp, of the toy shop, who was holding his hands in a complex and uncomfortable manner that he afterwards explained to Wintershed was a combination of something romantic called “Ju-jitsu” and something else still more romantic called the “Police Grip.”

“Pails,” explained Mr. Polly in breathless fragments. “All over the road. Pails. Bungs up the street with his pails. Look at them!”

“Deliber (kik) lib (kik) liberately rode into my goods (kik). Constantly (kik) annoying me (kik)!” said Mr. Rusper

They were both tremendously earnest and reasonable in their manner. They wished everyone to regard them as responsible and intellectual men acting for the love of right and the enduring good of the world. They felt they must treat this business as a profound and publicly significant affair. They wanted to explain and orate and show the entire necessity of everything they had done. Mr. Polly was convinced he had never been so absolutely correct in all his life as when he planted his foot in the sanitary dustbin, and Mr. Rusper considered his clutch at Mr. Polly’s hair as the one faultless impulse in an otherwise undistinguished career. But it was clear in their minds they might easily become ridiculous if they were not careful, if for a second they stepped over the edge of the high spirit and pitiless dignity they had hitherto maintained. At any cost they perceived they must not become ridiculous.