"Shop and cat thrown in," said Mr. Polly in spite of himself, and his head swam and he broke out into a cold sweat as he said it. He found her eyes fixed on him with an eager expression. "Mean to say--" she began as if for verification. He sprang to his feet, and turned to the window. "Little dog!" he said, and moved doorward hastily. "Eating my bicycle tire, I believe," he explained. And so escaped. He saw his bicycle in the hall and cut it dead. He heard Mrs. Larkins in the passage behind him as he opened the front door. He turned to her. "Thought my bicycle was on fire," he said. "Outside. Funny fancy! All right, reely. Little dog outside.... Miriam ready?" "What for?" "To go and meet Annie." Mrs. Larkins stared at him. "You're stopping for a bit of supper?" "If I may," said Mr. Polly. "You're a rum un," said Mrs. Larkins, and called: "Miriam!" Minnie appeared at the door of the room looking infinitely perplexed. "There ain't a little dog anywhere, Elfrid," she said. Mr. Polly passed his hand over his brow. "I had a most curious sensation. Felt exactly as though something was up somewhere. That's why I said Little Dog. All right now." He bent down and pinched his bicycle tire. "You was saying something about a cat, Elfrid," said Minnie. "Give you one," he answered without looking up. "The very day my shop is opened." He straightened himself up and smiled reassuringly. "Trust me," he said. II 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."