Page:The history of Mr. Polly.djvu/322

 It’s so with everyone. Jim couldn’t help himself. I shot at him and tried to kill him. I dropped the gun and he got it. He very nearly had me. I wasn’t a second too soon—ducking. Awkward—that night was. M’mm. But I don’t blame him—come to that. Only I don’t see what it’s all up to.

“Like children playing about in a nursery. Hurt themselves at times.

“There’s something that doesn’t mind us,” he resumed presently. “It isn’t what we try to get that we get, it isn’t the good we think we do is good. What makes us happy isn’t our trying, what makes others happy isn’t our trying. There’s a sort of character people like and stand up for and a sort they won’t. You got to work it out and take the consequences.... Miriam was always trying.”

“Who was Miriam?” asked the fat woman.

“No one you know. But she used to go about with her brows knit trying not to do whatever she wanted to do—if ever she did want to do anything”

He lost himself.

“You can’t help being fat,” said the fat woman after a pause, trying to get up to his thoughts.

“You can’t,” said Mr. Polly.

“It helps and it hinders.”

“Like my upside down way of talking.”

“The magistrates wouldn’t ’ave kept on the license to me if I ’adn’t been fat.”

“Then what have we done,” said Mr. Polly, “to get