of the voyage until the thing became a sing-song from
repetition. Later on she settled down to endless accounts of her home
in London, of her mother and sisters, of the way they lived. "And I'll
never see it any more. I'll never see them any more."

The Solong climate was reckoned the best in Australia; the "wretched
hole" was a pretty little town on the banks of a clear, willow-bordered
river, with vineyards on the slopes, and surrounded by a circle of
blue hills and peaks. We knew nothing of London, so she had her own way
there.

"She'll feel a bit lonely at first, but she'll soon get used to
Australia," said Johnson. He seemed to me to go out of his way to excuse
his wife.

Johnson had had a few contracts in England at one time; they had been in
"better circumstances"--that was the time she looked back to in England;
the last two years of bitter, black struggle at "home" seemed a blank in
her mind--but that's how women jump over facts when they have a selfish
fad.

Johnson rented a cottage and garden on the bank of the sunny river. He
said he took the place because there was ivy growing on the cottage, and
it might cheer his wife; but he had lost sight of the fact that, while
he had been born in an English village, his wife had been born and bred
in London, and had probably never noticed ivy. She said it was worse
than living in a slum.

Johnson was clever at his trade, and at many other things, but his wife
didn't seem aware of it. He was well liked, he grew to be popular, but
she didn't seem proud of the fact; she never seemed interested in him
or his prospects. She only wanted him to take her home again. We mustn't
forget that while he had a rush of work to occupy his mind she had not.

But Johnson grew stouter and prospered in spite of his wife--for a year
or so. New schools were being built in the district and the town was
practically re-built. Johnson took contracts for brickwork, plumbing and
house-painting, as well as carpentering, and had at one time as many as
ten men in his employ. He was making money.

I was working at my trade then, house-painting, and worked for Johnson.
I lodged at his cottage for a while, but soon got tired of hearing about
London, and Mrs Johnson's mother and sisters, and the house they lived
in, and the street it was in, and the parks where they used to take
their babies, and the shopping on Saturday afternoon. That woman was
terrible. She was at Johnson all the time abou