Mr. Polly tried to think he would be almost as happy wandering alone,
but he knew better. He had dreamt of casual encounters with
delightfully interesting people by the wayside--even romantic
encounters. Such things happened in Chaucer and "Bocashiew," they
happened with extreme facility in Mr. Richard Le Gallienne's very
detrimental book, _The Quest of the Golden Girl_, which he had read at
Canterbury, but he had no confidence they would happen in England--to
him.

When, a month later, he came out of the Clapham side door at last into
the bright sunshine of a fine London day, with a dazzling sense of
limitless freedom upon him, he did nothing more adventurous than order
the cabman to drive to Waterloo, and there take a ticket for Easewood.

He wanted--what _did_ he want most in life? I think his distinctive
craving is best expressed as fun--fun in companionship. He had already
spent a pound or two upon three select feasts to his fellow
assistants, sprat suppers they were, and there had been a great and
very successful Sunday pilgrimage to Richmond, by Wandsworth and
Wimbledon's open common, a trailing garrulous company walking about a
solemnly happy host, to wonderful cold meat and salad at the Roebuck,
a bowl of punch, punch! and a bill to correspond; but now it was a
weekday, and he went down to Easewood with his bag and portmanteau in
a solitary compartment, and looked out of the window upon a world in
which every possible congenial seemed either toiling in a situation
or else looking for one with a gnawing and hopelessly preoccupying
anxiety. He stared out of the window at the exploitation roads of
suburbs, and rows of houses all very much alike, either emphatically
and impatiently _to let_ or full of rather busy unsocial people.
Near Wimbledon he had a glimpse of golf links, and saw two elderly