The History of Mr. PollyWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
The History of Mr. Polly
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Life change events -- Fiction
Mr. Rusper laid one hand on the bicycle handle, and the other gripped
Mr. Polly's collar urgently. Whereupon Mr. Polly said: "Leggo!" and
again, "D'you _hear_! Leggo!" and then drove his elbow with
considerable force into the region of Mr. Rusper's midriff. Whereupon
Mr. Rusper, with a loud impassioned cry, resembling "Woo kik" more
than any other combination of letters, released the bicycle handle,
seized Mr. Polly by the cap and hair and bore his head and shoulders
downward. Thereat Mr. Polly, emitting such words as everyone knows and
nobody prints, butted his utmost into the concavity of Mr. Rusper,
entwined a leg about him and after terrific moments of swaying
instability, fell headlong beneath him amidst the bicycles and pails.
There on the pavement these inexpert children of a pacific age,
untrained in arms and uninured to violence, abandoned themselves to
amateurish and absurd efforts to hurt and injure one another--of which
the most palpable consequences were dusty backs, ruffled hair and torn
and twisted collars. Mr. Polly, by accident, got his finger into Mr.
Rusper's mouth, and strove earnestly for some time to prolong that
aperture in the direction of Mr. Rusper's ear before it occurred to
Mr. Rusper to bite him (and even then he didn't bite very hard), while
Mr. Rusper concentrated his mind almost entirely on an effort to rub
Mr. Polly's face on the pavement. (And their positions bristled with
chances of the deadliest sort!) They didn't from first to last draw
blood.
Then it seemed to each of them that the other had become endowed with
many hands and several voices and great accessions of strength. They
submitted to fate and ceased to struggle. They found themselves torn
apart and held up by outwardly scandalised and inwardly delighted
neighbours, and invited to explain what it was all about.
"Got to (kik) puttem all back!" panted Mr. Rusper in the expert grasp
of Hinks. "Merely asked him to (kik) puttem all back."
Mr. Polly was under restraint of little Clamp, of the toy shop, who
was holding his hands in a complex and uncomfortable manner that he
afterwards explained to Wintershed was a combination of something
romantic called "Ju-jitsu" and something else still more romantic
called the "Police Grip."
"Pails," explained Mr. Polly in breathless fragments. "All over the
road. Pails. Bungs up the street with his pails. Look at them!"
"Deliber (kik) lib (kik) liberately rode into my goods (kik).
Constantly (kik) annoying me (kik)!" said Mr. Rusper....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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