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 the table and meditated on his next step while Annie vanished to get his tea. After all, things didn’t seem so bad with Miriam. He tried over several gambits in imagination.

“Unusual name,” he said as Annie laid a cloth before him. Annie looked interrogation.

“Polly. Polly & Larkins. Real, I suppose?”

“Polly’s my sister’s name. She married a Mr. Polly.”

“Widow I presume?” said Mr. Polly.

“Yes. This five years—come October.”

“Lord!” said Mr. Polly in unfeigned surprise.

“Found drowned he was. There was a lot of talk in the place.”

“Never heard of it,” said Mr. Polly. “I’m a stranger—rather.”

“In the Medway near Maidstone. He must have been in the water for days. Wouldn’t have known him, my sister wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for the name sewn in his clothes. All whitey and eat away he was.”

“Bless my heart! Must have been rather a shock for her!”

“It was a shock,” said Annie, and added darkly: “But sometimes a shock’s better than a long agony.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Polly.

He gazed with a rapt expression at the preparations before him. “So I’m drowned,” something was saying inside him. “Life insured?” he asked.