"Oh, he shouldn't have done that... no, really he shouldn't!" she murmured; and the hand with the letter in it drooped to her lap.

She had been doing a little surrept.i.tious baking in Richard's absence, and without a doubt was hot and tired. The tears rose to her eyes.

Deserting her pastry-board she retreated behind the woodstack and sat down on the chopping-block; and then, for some minutes, the sky was blotted out. She felt quite unequal, in her present condition, to facing Sarah, who was so sensitive, so easily shocked; and she was deeply averse from her fine-lady sister discovering the straitness of Richard's means and home.

But it was hard for Polly to secure a moment's privacy.

"An' so this is w'ere you're 'idin', is it?" said Long Jim snappishly--he had been opening a keg of treacle and held a sticky plug in his hand. "An' me runnin' my pore ol' legs off arter you!" And Hempel met her on her entry with: "No further bad news, I 'ope and trust, ma'am?"--Hempel always retained his smooth servility of manner.

"The shopman PAR EXCELLENCE, my dear!" Richard was used to say of him.

Polly rea.s.sured her attendants, blew her nose, re-read her letter; and other feelings came uppermost. She noticed how scribbly the writing was--Richard had evidently been hard pushed for time. There was an apologetic tone about it, too, which was unlike him. He was probably wondering what she would say; he might even be making himself reproaches. It was unkind of her to add to them. Let her think rather of the sad state poor John had been found in, and of his two motherless babes. As for Sarah, it would never have done to leave her out.

Wiping her eyes Polly untied her cooking-ap.r.o.n and set to reviewing her resources. Sarah would have to share her bed, Richard to sleep on the sofa. The children ... and here she knitted her brows. Then going into the yard, she called to Tom Oc.o.c.k, who sat whittling a stick in front of his father's house; and Tom went down to Main Street for her, and bought a mattress which he carried home on his shoulder. This she spread on the bedroom floor, Mrs. Hemmerde having already given both rooms a sound scouring, just in case a flea or a spider should be lying perdu. After which Polly fell to baking again in good earnest; for the travellers would be famished by the time they arrived.

Towards ten o'clock Tom, who was on the look-out, shouted that the coach was in, and Polly, her table spread, a good fire going, stepped to the door, outwardly very brave, inwardly all a-flutter. Directly, however, she got sight of the forlorn party that toiled up the slope: Sarah clinging to Hempel's arm, Mahony bearing one heavy child, and--could she believe her eyes?--Jerry staggering under the other: her bashfulness was gone. She ran forward to prop poor Sarah on her free side, to guide her feet to the door; and it is doubtful whether little Polly had ever spent a more satisfying hour than that which followed.

Her husband, watching her in silent amaze, believed she thoroughly enjoyed the fuss and commotion.

There was Sarah, too sick to see anything but the bed, to undress, to make fomentations for, to coax to mouthfuls of tea and toast. There was Jerry to feed and send off, with the warmest of hugs, to share Tom Oc.o.c.k's pallia.s.se. There were the children ... well, Polly's first plan had been to put them straight to bed. But when she came to peel off their little trousers she changed her mind.

"I think, Mrs. Hemmerde, if you'll get me a tub of hot water, we'll just pop them into it; they'll sleep so much better," she said ... not quite truthfully. Her private reflection was: "I don't think Sarah can once have washed them properly, all that time."

The little girl let herself be bathed in her sleep; but young John stood and bawled, digging fat fists into slits of eyes, while Polly scrubbed at his ma.s.sy knees, the dimpled ups and downs of which looked as if they had been worked in by hand. She had never seen her brother's children before and was as heartily lost in admiration of their plump, well-formed bodies, as her helper of the costliness of their outfit.

"Real Injun muslin, as I'm alive!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the woman, on fishing out their night-clothes. "An' wid the sa.s.siest lace for trimmin'!--Och, the poor little motherless angels!--Stan' quiet, you young divil you, an'

lemme b.u.t.ton you up!"

Clean as lily-bells, the pair were laid on the mattress-bed.

"At least they can't fall out," said Polly, surveying her work with a sigh of content.

Every one else having retired, she sat with Richard before the fire, waiting for his bath-water to reach the boil. He was anxious to know just how she had fared in his absence, she to hear the full story of his mission. He confessed to her that his offer to load himself up with the whole party had been made in a momentary burst of feeling.

Afterwards he had repented his impulsiveness.

"On your account, love. Though when I see how well you've managed--you dear, clever little woman!"

And Polly consoled him, being now come honestly to the stage of: "But, Richard, what else could you do?"

"What, indeed! I knew Emma had no relatives in Melbourne, and who John's intimates might be I had no more idea than the man in the moon."

"John hasn't any friends. He never had."

"As for leaving the children in Sarah's charge, if you'll allow me to say so, my dear, I consider your sister Sarah the biggest goose of a female it has ever been my lot to run across."

"Ah, but you don't really know Sarah yet," said Polly, and smiled a little, through the tears that had ripen to her eyes at the tale of John's despair.

What Mahony did not mention to her was the necessity he had been under of borrowing money; though Polly was aware he had left home with but a modest sum in his purse. He wished to spare her feelings. Polly had a curious delicacy--he might almost call it a manly delicacy--with regard to money; and the fact that John had not offered to put hand to pocket; let alone liberally flung a blank cheque at his head, would, Mahony knew, touch his wife on a tender spot. Nor did Polly herself ask questions. Richard made no allusion to John having volunteered to bear expenses, so the latter had evidently not done so. What a pity! Richard was so particular himself, in matters of this kind, that he might write her brother down close and stingy. Of course John's distressed state of mind partly served to excuse him. But she could not imagine the calamity that would cause Richard to forget his obligations.

She slid her hand into her husband's and they sat for a while in silence. Then, half to herself, and out of a very different train of thought she said: "Just fancy them never crying once for their mother."

"Talking of friends," said Sarah, and fastidiously cleared her throat.

"Talking of friends, I wonder now what has become of one of those young gentlemen I met at your wedding. He was ... let me see ... why, I declare if I haven't forgotten his name!"

"Oh, I know who you mean--besides there was only one, Sarah," Mahony heard his wife reply, and therewith fall into her sister's trap. "You mean Purdy--Purdy Smith--who was Richard's best man."

"Smith?" echoed Sarah. "La, Polly! Why don't he make it Smythe?"

It was a warm evening some three weeks later. The store was closed to customers; but Mahony had ensconced himself in a corner of it with a book: since the invasion, this was the one place in which he could make sure of finding quiet. The sisters sat on the log-bench before the house; and, without seeing them, Mahony knew to a nicety how they were employed. Polly darned stockings, for John's children; Sarah was tatting, with her little finger stuck out at right angles to the rest.

Mahony could hardly think of this finger without irritation: it seemed to sum up Sarah's whole outlook on life.

Meanwhile Polly's fresh voice went on, relating Purdy's fortunes. "He took part, you know, in the dreadful affair on the Eureka last Christmas, when so many poor men were killed. We can speak of it, now they've all been pardoned; but then we had to be very careful. Well, he was shot in the ankle, and will always be lame from it."

"What!--go hobbling on one leg for the remainder of his days? Oh, my dear!" said Sarah, and laughed.

"Yes, because the wound wasn't properly attended to--he had to hide about in the bush, for ever so long. Later on he went to the Beamishes, to be nursed. But by that time his poor leg was in a very bad state.

You know he is engaged--or very nearly so--to Tilly Beamish."

"What?" said Sarah once more. "That handsome young fellow engaged to one of those vulgar creatures?"

"Oh, Sarah ... not really vulgar. It isn't their fault they didn't have a better education. They lived right up-country, where there were no schools. Tilly never saw a town till she was sixteen; but she can sit any horse.--Yes, we hope very much Purdy will soon settle down and marry her--though he left the Hotel again without proposing." And Polly sighed.

"There he shows his good taste, my dear."

"Oh, I'm sure he's fond of Tilly. It's only that his life is so unsettled. He's been a barman at Euroa since then; and the last we heard of him, he was shearing somewhere on the Goulburn. He doesn't seem able to stick to anything."

"And a rolling stone gathers no moss!" gave back Sarah sententiously--and in fancy Mahony saw the cut-and-dried nod with which she accompanied the words.

Here Hempel pa.s.sed through the store, clad in his Sunday best, his hair plastered flat with bear's-grease.

"Going out for a stroll?" asked his master.

"That was my h'intention, sir. I don't think you'll find I've left any of my dooties undone."

"Oh, go, by all means!" said Mahony curtly, nettled at having his harmless query misconstrued. It pointed a suspicion he had had, of late, that a change was coming over Hempel. The model employee was a shade less prompt than heretofore to fly at his word, and once or twice seemed actually to be studying his own convenience. Without knowing what the matter was, Mahony felt it politic not to be over-exacting--even mildly to conciliate his a.s.sistant. It would put him in an awkward fix, now that he was on the verge of winding up affairs, should Hempel take it in his head to leave him in the lurch.

The lean figure moved on and blocked the doorway. Now there was a sudden babble of cheepy voices, and simultaneously Sarah cried: "Where have you been, my little cherubs? Come to your aunt, and let her kiss you!"

But the children, who had frankly no great liking for Aunt Sarah, would, Mahony knew, turn a deaf ear to this display of opportunism and make a rush for his wife. Laying down his book he ran out. "Polly ...

cautious!"

"It's all right, Richard, I'm being careful." Polly had let her mending fall, and with each hand held a flaxen-haired child at arm's length.

"Johnny, dirty boy! what HAVE you been up to?"

"He played he was a digger and sat down in a pool--I couldn't get him to budge," answered Jerry, and drew his sleeve over his perspiring forehead.

"Oh fy, for shame!"

"Don' care!" said John, unabashed.