When, after imperceptible manoeuvres by Mrs. Larkins, he found himself
starting circuitously through the inevitable recreation ground with
Miriam to meet Annie, he found himself quite unable to avoid the topic
of the shop that had now taken such a grip upon him. A sense of danger
only increased the attraction. Minnie's persistent disposition to
accompany them had been crushed by a novel and violent and urgently
expressed desire on the part of Mrs. Larkins to see her do something
in the house sometimes....
"You really think you'll open a shop?" asked Miriam.
"I hate cribs," said Mr. Polly, adopting a moderate tone. "In a shop
there's this drawback and that, but one is one's own master."
"That wasn't all talk?"
"Not a bit of it."
"After all," he went on, "a little shop needn't be so bad."
"It's a 'ome," said Miriam.
"It's a home."
Pause.
"There's no need to keep accounts and that sort of thing if there's no
assistant. I daresay I could run a shop all right if I wasn't
interfered with."
"I should like to see you in your shop," said Miriam. "I expect you'd
keep everything tremendously neat."
The conversation flagged.
"Let's sit down on one of those seats over there," said Miriam. "Where
we can see those blue flowers."
They did as she suggested, and sat down in a corner where a triangular
bed of stock and delphinium brightened the asphalted traceries of the
Recreation Ground.
"I wonder what they call those flowers," she said. "I always like
them. They're handsome."
"Delphicums and larkspurs," said Mr. Polly. "They used to be in the
park at Port Burdock.
"Floriferous corner," he added approvingly.
He put an arm over the back of the seat, and assumed a more
comfortable attitude. He glanced at Miriam, who was sitting in a lax,
thoughtful pose with her eyes on the flowers. She was wearing her old
dress, she had not had time to change, and the blue tones of her old
dress brought out a certain warmth in her skin, and her pose
exaggerated whatever was feminine in her rather lean and insufficient
body, and rounded her flat chest delusively. A little line of light
lay along her profile. The afternoon was full of transfiguring
sunshine, children were playing noisily in the adjacent sandpit, some
Judas trees were brightly abloom in the villa gardens that bordered
the Recreation Ground, and all the place was bright with touches of
young summer colour. It all merged with the effect of Miriam in Mr.
Polly's mind.
Her thoughts found speech. "One did ought to be happy in a shop," she
said with a note of unusual softness in her voice.
It seemed to him that she was right. One did ought to be happy in a
shop. Folly not to banish dreams that made one ache of townless woods
and bracken tangles and red-haired linen-clad figures sitting in
dappled sunshine upon grey and crumbling walls and looking queenly
down on one with clear blue eyes. Cruel and foolish dreams they were,
that ended in one's being laughed at and made a mock of. There was no
mockery here.
"A shop's such a respectable thing to be," said Miriam thoughtfully.
"_I_ could be happy in a shop," he said.
His sense of effect made him pause.
"If I had the right company," he added.
She became very still.
Mr. Polly swerved a little from the conversational ice-run upon which
he had embarked.
"I'm not such a blooming Geezer," he said, "as not to be able to sell
goods a bit. One has to be nosy over one's buying of course. But I
shall do all right."
He stopped, and felt falling, falling through the aching silence that
followed.
"If you get the right company," said Miriam.
"I shall get that all right."
"You don't mean you've got someone--"
He found himself plunging.
"I've got someone in my eye, this minute," he said.
"Elfrid!" she said, turning on him. "You don't mean--"
Well, _did_ he mean? "I do!" he said.
"Not reely!" She clenched her hands to keep still.
He took the conclusive step.
"Well, you and me, Miriam, in a little shop--with a cat and a
canary--" He tried too late to get back to a hypothetical note. "Just
suppose it!"
"You mean," said Miriam, "you're in love with me, Elfrid?"