Regardless of the public park, the children in the sandpit and everyone, she bent forward and seized his shoulder and kissed him on the lips. Something lit up in Mr. Polly at the touch. He put an arm about her and kissed her back, and felt an irrevocable act was sealed. He had a curious feeling that it would be very satisfying to marry and have a wife--only somehow he wished it wasn't Miriam. Her lips were very pleasant to him, and the feel of her in his arm. They recoiled a little from each other and sat for a moment, flushed and awkwardly silent. His mind was altogether incapable of controlling its confusion. "I didn't dream," said Miriam, "you cared--. Sometimes I thought it was Annie, sometimes Minnie--" "Always liked you better than them," said Mr. Polly. "I loved you, Elfrid," said Miriam, "since ever we met at your poor father's funeral. Leastways I _would_ have done, if I had thought. You didn't seem to mean anything you said. "I _can't_ believe it!" she added. "Nor I," said Mr. Polly. "You mean to marry me and start that little shop--" "Soon as ever I find it," said Mr. Polly. "I had no more idea when I came out with you--" "Nor me!" "It's like a dream." They said no more for a little while. "I got to pinch myself to think it's real," said Miriam. "What they'll do without me at 'ome I can't imagine. When I tell them--" For the life of him Mr. Polly could not tell whether he was fullest of tender anticipations or regretful panic. "Mother's no good at managing--not a bit. Annie don't care for 'ouse work and Minnie's got no 'ed for it. What they'll do without me I can't imagine." "They'll have to do without you," said Mr. Polly, sticking to his guns. A clock in the town began striking. "Lor'!" said Miriam, "we shall miss Annie--sitting 'ere and love-making!" She rose and made as if to take Mr. Polly's arm. But Mr. Polly felt that their condition must be nakedly exposed to the ridicule of the world by such a linking, and evaded her movement. Annie was already in sight before a flood of hesitation and terrors assailed Mr. Polly. "Don't tell anyone yet a bit," he said. "Only mother," said Miriam firmly. III Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black--looked at in the right light, and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. You return from a little careless holiday abroad, and turn over the page of a newspaper, and against the name of that distant, vague-conceived railway in mortgages upon which you have embarked the bulk of your capital, you see instead of the familiar, persistent 95-6 (varying at most to 93 _ex. div._) this slightly richer arrangement of marks: 76 1/2--78 1/2. It is like the opening of a pit just under your feet! So, too, Mr. Polly's happy sense of limitless resources was obliterated suddenly by a vision of this tracery: "298" instead of the "350" he had come to regard as the fixed symbol of his affluence.