Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/210

 telling her to “Answer the Question! Answer the Question!”

“Seems a Pity,” said the chairman, when binding them over to keep the peace, “you can’t behave like Respectable Tradesmen. Seems a Great Pity. Bad Example to the Young and all that. Don’t do any Good to the town, don’t do any Good to yourselves, don’t do any manner of Good, to have all the Tradesmen in the Place scrapping about the Pavement of an Afternoon. Think we’re letting you off very easily this time, and hope it will be a Warning to you. Don’t expect Men of your Position to come up before us. Very Regrettable Affair. Eh?”

He addressed the latter enquiry to his two colleagues.

“Exactly, exactly,” said the colleague to the right.

“Er—(kik),” said Mr. Rusper.

But the disgust that overshadowed Mr. Polly’s being as he sat upon the stile, had other and profounder justification than his quarrel with Rusper and the indignity of appearing before the county bench. He was for the first time in his business career short with his rent for the approaching quarter day, and so far as he could trust his own handling of figures he was sixty or seventy pounds on the wrong side of solvency. And that was the outcome of fifteen years of passive endurance of