Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/321

 She added mildly: “I can’t ’ardly say I’m sorry.”

“Nor me,” said Mr. Polly, and got a step nearer the thought in him. “But it don’t seem much good his having been alive, does it?”

“’E wasn’t much good,” the fat woman admitted. “Ever.”

“I suppose there were things that were good to him,” Mr. Polly speculated. “They weren’t our things.”

His hold slipped again. “I often wonder about life,” he said weakly.

He tried again. “One seems to start in life,” he said, “expecting something. And it doesn’t happen. And it doesn’t matter. One starts with ideas that things are good and things are bad—and it hasn’t much relation to what is good and what is bad. I’ve always been the skeptaceous sort, and it’s always seemed rot to me to pretend we know good from evil. It’s just what I’ve never done. No Adam’s apple stuck in my throat, ma’am. I don’t own to it.”

He reflected.

“I set fire to a house—once.”

The fat woman started.

“I don’t feel sorry for it. I don’t believe it was a bad thing to do—any more than burning a toy like I did once when I was a baby. I nearly killed myself with a razor. Who hasn’t?—anyhow gone as far as thinking of it? Most of my time I’ve been half dreaming. I married like a dream almost. I’ve never really planned my life or set out to live. I happened; things happened to me.