The History of Mr Polly, page 149 by H.G. Wells
<< Return to Title Details & Download150
"Come to bed?"
"It's three."
Pause, while Mr. Polly disrobed slowly.
"I been thinking," said Miriam, "It isn't going to be so bad after all. We shall get your insurance. We can easy begin all over again."
"H'm," said Mr. Polly.
She turned her face away from him and reflected.
"Get a better house," said Miriam, regarding the wallpaper pattern. "I've always 'ated them stairs."
Mr. Polly removed a boot.
"Choose a better position where there's more doing," murmured Miriam....
"Not half so bad," she whispered....
"You wanted stirring up," she said, half asleep....
It dawned upon Mr. Polly for the first time that he had forgotten something.
He ought to have cut his throat!
The fact struck him as remarkable, but as now no longer of any particular urgency. It seemed a thing far off in the past, and he wondered why he had not thought of it before. Odd thing life is! If he had done it he would never have seen this clean and agreeable apartment with the electric light.... His thoughts wandered into a question of detail. Where could he have put the razor down? Somewhere in the little room behind the shop, he supposed, but he could not think where more precisely. Anyhow it didn't matter now.
He undressed himself calmly, got into bed, and fell asleep almost immediately.
Chapter the
NinthThe Potwell Inn
I
But when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it to something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting. There is only one sort of man who is absolutely