He came down to the cottage at Easewood in response to an urgent telegram, and found his father already dead. His cousin Johnson received him with much solemnity and ushered him upstairs, to look at a stiff, straight, shrouded form, with a face unwontedly quiet and, as it seemed, with its pinched nostrils, scornful. "Looks peaceful," said Mr. Polly, disregarding the scorn to the best of his ability. "It was a merciful relief," said Mr. Johnson. There was a pause. "Second--Second Departed I've ever seen. Not counting mummies," said Mr. Polly, feeling it necessary to say something. "We did all we could." "No doubt of it, O' Man," said Mr. Polly. A second long pause followed, and then, much to Mr. Polly's great relief, Johnson moved towards the door. Afterwards Mr. Polly went for a solitary walk in the evening light, and as he walked, suddenly his dead father became real to him. He thought of things far away down the perspective of memory, of jolly moments when his father had skylarked with a wildly excited little boy, of a certain annual visit to the Crystal Palace pantomime, full of trivial glittering incidents and wonders, of his father's dread back while customers were in the old, minutely known shop. It is curious that the memory which seemed to link him nearest to the dead man was the memory of a fit of passion. His father had wanted to get a small sofa up the narrow winding staircase from the little room behind the shop to the bedroom above, and it had jammed. For a time his father had coaxed, and then groaned like a soul in torment and given way to blind fury, had sworn, kicked and struck at the offending piece of furniture and finally wrenched it upstairs, with considerable incidental damage to lath and plaster and one of the castors. That moment when self-control was altogether torn aside, the shocked discovery of his father's perfect humanity, had left a singular impression on Mr. Polly's queer mind. It was as if something extravagantly vital had come out of his father and laid a warmly passionate hand upon his heart. He remembered that now very vividly, and it became a clue to endless other memories that had else been dispersed and confusing. A weakly wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round impossible corners--in that symbol Mr. Polly could recognise himself and all the trouble of humanity. He hadn't had a particularly good time, poor old chap, and now it was all over. Finished....