Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/273

 “You two oughtn’t to be left,” he said.

The plump woman stared at his back with hard hope in her eyes.

“I don’t see that it’s my affair,” said Mr. Polly.

The plump woman resumed her business with the kettle.

“I’d like to have a look at him before I go,” said Mr. Polly, thinking aloud. And added, “somehow. Not my business, of course.”

“Lord!” he cried with a start at a noise in the bar, “who’s that?”

“Only a customer,” said the plump woman.

Mr. Polly made no rash promises, and thought a great deal.

“It seems a good sort of Crib,” he said, and added, “for a chap who’s looking for trouble.”

But he stayed on and did various things out of the list I have already given, and worked the ferry, and it was four days before he saw anything of Uncle Jim. And so resistent is the human mind to things not yet experienced that he could easily have believed in that time that there was no such person in the world as Uncle Jim. The plump woman, after her one outbreak of confidence, ignored the subject, and little Polly seemed to have exhausted her impressions in her first communication, and engaged her mind now with a simple