lit with the light of battle.
Poor Mr. May had to gather together his wits and his sprightliness
for his next meeting. He had decided he must make a percentage in
other ways. He schemed in all known ways. He would accept the ten
pounds--but really, did ever you hear of anything so ridiculous in
your life, _ten pounds!_--dirty old screw, dirty, screwing old
woman! He would accept the ten pounds; but he would get his own
back.
He flitted down once more to the negro, to ask him of a certain
wooden show-house, with section sides and roof, an old travelling
theatre which stood closed on Selverhay Common, and might probably
be sold. He pressed across once more to Mr. Bows. He wrote various
letters and drew up certain notes. And the next morning, by eight
o'clock, he was on his way to Selverhay: walking, poor man, the long
and uninteresting seven miles on his small and rather tight-shod
feet, through country that had been once beautiful but was now
scrubbled all over with mining villages, on and on up heavy hills
and down others, asking his way from uncouth clowns, till at last he
came to the Common, which wasn't a Common at all, but a sort of
village more depressing than usual: naked, high, exposed to heaven
and to full barren view.
There he saw the theatre-booth. It was old and sordid-looking, painted
dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The
grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn't rotten?
He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a
country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his
bicycle and came stealthily across the grass wheeling the same bicycle,
and startled poor Mr. May almost into apoplexy by demanding behind him,
in a loud voice:
"What're you after?"
Mr. May rose up with flushed face and swollen neck-veins, holding
his pen-knife in his hand.
"Oh," he said, "good-morning." He settled his waistcoat and glanced
over the tall, lanky constable and the glittering bicycle. "I was
taking a look at this old erection, with a view to buying it. I'm
afraid it's going rotten from the bottom."
"Shouldn't wonder," said the policeman suspiciously, watching Mr.
May shut the pocket knife.
"I'm afraid that makes it useless for my purpose," said Mr. May.
The policeman did not deign to answer.
"Could you tell me where I can find out about it, anyway?" Mr. May
used his most affable, man of the world manner. But the policeman
continued to stare him up and down, as if he were some marvellous
specimen unknown on the normal, honest earth.
"What, find out?" said the constable.
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