“I shan’t want dinner,” Polly remarked in an off-hand way as she moved towards the door.

“Going to see Mrs. Clover?” Gammon inquired.

“I’m sick of going there.  It’s always the same talk.”

“Wait till your ’usband runs away from you and stays away for five years,” said Mrs. Bubb with a renewal of anger, “and then see what you find to talk about.”

Polly laughed and went away humming.

“If it wasn’t that I feel afraid for her,” continued Mrs. Bubb in a lower voice, “I’d give that young woman notice to quit.  Her cheek’s getting past everything.  Did you see her gold watch and chain?”

“Yes, I did; where does it come from?”

“That’s more than I can tell you, Mr. Gammon.  I don’t want to think ill of the girl, but there’s jolly queer goin’s-on.  And she’s so brazen about it!  I don’t know what to think.”

Gammon knitted his brows and gazed round the kitchen.

“I think Polly’s straight,” he observed at length.  “I don’t seem to notice anything wrong with her except her cheek and temper.  She’ll have to be taken down a peg one of these days, but I don’t envy the man that’ll have the job.  It won’t be me, for certain,” he added with a laugh.

Moggie came into the room, bringing a telegram.

“For me?” said Gammon.  “Just what I expected.”  Reading, he broadened his visage into a grin of infinite satisfaction. “’Please explain absence.  Hope nothing wrong.’  How kind of them, ain’t it!  Yesterday they chucked me; now they’re polite.  Reply-paid too; very considerate.  They shall have their reply.”

He laid the blank form on the table and wrote upon it in pencil, every letter beautifully shaped in a first-rate commercial hand: 

“Go to Bath and get your heads shaved.”  “You ain’t a-goin’ to send that!” exclaimed Mrs. Bubb, when he had held the message to her for perusal.

“It’ll do them good.  They’re like Polly—­want taking down a peg.”

Moggie ran off with the paper to the waiting boy, and Mr. Gammon laughed for five minutes uproariously.

“Would you like a little bull-pup, Mrs. Bubb? he asked at length.

“Not me, Mr. Gammon.  I’ve enough pups of my own, thank you all the same.”

CHAPTER III

THE CHINA SHOP

Mr. Gammon took his way down Kennington Road, walking at a leisurely pace, smiting his leg with his doubled dog-whip, and looking about him with his usual wideawake, contented air.  He had in perfection the art of living for the moment, no art in his case, but a natural characteristic, for which it never occurred to him to be grateful.  Indeed, it is a common characteristic in the world to which Mr. Gammon belonged.  He and his like take what the heavens send them, grumbling or rejoicing, but never reflecting upon their place in the sum of things.  To Mr. Gammon life was a wonderfully simple matter.  He had his worries and his desires, but so long as he suffered neither from headache nor stomach-ache, these things interfered not at all with his enjoyment of a fine morning.