bran'-new house awaiting her."

"Well, that's the end of this little roof-tree," said Mahony.--The
loaded dray had driven off, the children and Ellen perched on top of
the furniture, and he was giving a last look round. "We've spent some
very happy days under it, eh, my dear?"

"Oh, very," said Polly, shaking out her skirts. "But we shall be just
as happy in the new one."

"God grant we may! It's not too much to hope I've now seen all the
downs of my life. I've managed to pack a good many into thirty short
years.-- And that reminds me, Mrs. Townshend-Mahony, do you know you
will have been married to me two whole years, come next Friday?"

"Why, so we shall!" cried Polly, and was transfixed in the act of tying
her bonnet-strings. "How time does fly! It seems only the other day I
saw this room for the first time. I peeped in, you know, while you were
fetching the box. DO you remember how I cried, Richard? I was afraid of
a spider or something." And the Polly of eighteen looked back, with a
motherly amusement, at her sixteen-year-old eidolon. "But now, dear, if
you're ready ... or else the furniture will get there before we do.
We'd better take the short cut across Soldiers' Hill. That's the cat in
that basket, for you to carry, and here's your microscope. I've got the
decanter and the best teapot. Shall we go?"

Chapter II

And now for a month or more Mahony had been in possession of a room
that was all his own. Did he retire into it and shut the door, he could
make sure of not being disturbed. Polly herself tapped before entering;
and he let her do so. Polly was dear; but dearer still was his
long-coveted privacy.

He knew, too, that she was happily employed; the fitting-up and
furnishing of the house was a job after her own heart. She had proved
both skilful and economical at it: thanks to her, they had used a bare
three-quarters of the sum allotted by Ocock for the purpose--and this
was well; for any number of unforeseen expenses had cropped up at the
last moment. Polly had a real knack for making things "do". Old empty
boxes, for instance, underwent marvellous transformations at her
hands--emerged, clad in chintz and muslin, as sofas and toilet-tables.
She hung her curtains on strings, and herself sewed the seams of the
parlour carpet, squatting Turk-fashion on the floor, and working away,
with a great needle shaped like a scimitar, till the perspiration ran
down her face. It was also she who, standing o