ted Pompey's eyes, Polly had to lay down her sewing and laugh at
her husband, so greatly did his behaviour amuse her.

Again, there was the question of literature. Books to Mahony were
almost as necessary as bread; to his girl-wife, on the other hand, they
seemed a somewhat needless luxury--less vital by far than the animals
that walked the floor. She took great care of the precious volumes
Richard had had carted up from Melbourne; but the cost of the transport
was what impressed her most. It was not an overstatement, thought
Mahony, to say that a stack of well-chopped, neatly piled wood meant
more to Polly than all the books ever written. Not that she did not
enjoy a good story: her work done, she liked few things better; and he
often smiled at the ease with which she lived herself into the world of
make-believe, knowing, of course, that it WAS make-believe and just a
kind of humbug. But poetry, and the higher fiction! Little Polly's
professed love for poetry had been merely a concession to the
conventional idea of girlhood; or, at best, such a burning wish to be
all her Richard desired, that, at the moment, she was convinced of the
truth of what she said. But did he read to her from his favourite
authors her attention WOULD wander, in spite of the efforts she made to
pin it down.

Mahony declaimed:

'TIS THE SUNSET OF LIFE GIVES US MYSTICAL LORE,

AND COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE,

and his pleasure in the swing of the couplet was such that he repeated
it.

Polly wakened with a start. Her thoughts had been miles away--had been
back at the "Family Hotel". There Purdy, after several adventures, his
poor leg a mass of supuration, had at length betaken himself, to be
looked after by his Tilly; and Polly's hopes were all alight again.

She blushed guiltily at the repetition, and asked her husband to say
the lines once again. He did so.

"But they don't really, Richard, do they?" she said in an apologetic
tone--she referred to the casting of shadows. "It would be so useful if
they did--" and she drew a sigh at Purdy's dilatory treatment of the
girl who loved him so well.

"Oh, you prosaic little woman!" cried Mahony, and laid down his book to
kiss her. It was impossible to be vexed with Polly: she was so honest,
so transparent. "Did you never hear of a certain something called
poetic licence?"

No: Polly was more or less familiar with various other forms of
licence, from the gold-diggers' that had cau