"He's got a Heavy on," said Mr. Polly. "Go it, O' Man; let's have some
more of it."
"Look at old Morrison's dress-stuff windows! Tidy, tasteful, correct,
I grant you, but Bleak!" He let out the word reinforced to a shout;
"Bleak!"
"Bleak!" echoed Mr. Polly.
"Just pieces of stuff in rows, rows of tidy little puffs, perhaps one
bit just unrolled, quiet tickets."
"Might as well be in church, O' Man," said Mr. Polly.
"A window ought to be exciting," said Parsons; "it ought to make you
say: El-_lo_! when you see it."
He paused, and Platt watched him over a snorting pipe.
"Rockcockyo," said Mr. Polly.
"We want a new school of window dressing," said Parsons, regardless of
the comment. "A New School! The Port Burdock school. Day after
to-morrow I change the Fitzallan Street stuff. This time, it's going to
be a change. I mean to have a crowd or bust!"
And as a matter of fact he did both.
His voice dropped to a note of self-reproach. "I've been timid, O'
Man. I've been holding myself in. I haven't done myself Justice. I've
kept down the simmering, seething, teeming ideas.... All that's over
now."
"Over," gulped Polly.
"Over for good and all, O' Man."