she wished she was
dead or at the bottom of the sea; and Polly, torn between pride and
pain at Purdy's delinquency, could only kiss her several times without
speaking.

The farewells buzzed and flew.

"Good-bye to you, little lass ... beg pardon, Mrs. Dr. Mahony!"----

"Mind you write, Poll! I shall die to 'ear."----

"Ta-ta, little silly goosey, and AU REVOIR!"--"Mind he don't pitch you
out of the cart, Polly!"--"Good-bye, Polly, my duck, and remember I'll
come to you in a winkin', h'if and when ..." which speech on the part
of Mrs. Beamish distressed Polly to the verge of tears.

But finally she was torn from their arms and hoisted into the cart; and
Mahony, the reins in his hand, began to unstiffen from the wooden
figure-head he had felt himself during the ceremony, and under the
whirring tongues and whispered confidences of the women.

"And now, Polly, for home!" he said exultantly, when the largest
pocket-handkerchief had shrunk to the size of a nit, and Polly had
ceased to twist her neck for one last, last glimpse of her friends.

And then the bush, and the loneliness of the bush, closed round them.

It was the time of flowers--of fierce young growth after the fruitful
winter rains. The short-lived grass, green now as that of an English
meadow, was picked out into patterns by the scarlet of the Running
Postman; purple sarsaparilla festooned the stems of the scrub; there
were vast natural paddocks, here of yellow everlastings, there of
heaths in full bloom. Compared with the dark, spindly foliage of the
she-oaks, the ti-trees' waxy flowers stood out like orange-blossoms
against firs. On damp or marshy ground wattles were aflame: great
quivering masses of softest gold. Wherever these trees stood, the
fragrance of their yellow puff-ball blossoms saturated the air; one
knew, before one saw them, that they were coming, and long after they
had been left behind one carried their honeyed sweetness with one;
against them, no other scent could have made itself felt. And to Mahony
these waves of perfume, into which they were continually running, came,
in the course of the hours, to stand for a symbol of the golden future
for which he and Polly were making; and whenever in after years he met
with wattles in full bloom, he was carried back to the blue spring day
of this wedding-journey, and jogged on once more, in the light cart,
with his girl-wife at his side.

It was necessarily a silent drive. More rain had fallen