d been great expenses in
connection with the hotel; and Mr. B. had had an accident to his leg.
From what she wrote, though, Mahony saw that it was not the first time
such remissness had occurred; and he felt grimly indignant with her
employers. Keeping open house, and hospitable to the point of
vulgarity, they were, it was evident, pinchfists when it came to
parting with their money. Still, in the case of a little woman who had
served them so faithfully! In thought he set a thick black mark against
their name, for their cavalier treatment of his Polly. And extended it
to John Turnham as well. John had made no move to put hand to pocket;
and Polly's niceness of feeling had stood in the way of her applying to
him for aid. It made Mahony yearn to snatch the girl to him, then and
there; to set her free of all contact with such coarse-grained, miserly
brutes.

Old Ocock negotiated the hire of a neat spring cart for him, and a
stout little cob; and at last the day had actually come, when he could
set out to bring Polly home. By his side was Ned Turnham. Ned, still a
lean-jowled wages-man at Rotten Gully, made no secret of his glee at
getting carried down thus comfortably to Polly's nuptials. They drove
the eternal forty odd miles to Geelong, each stick and stone of which
was fast becoming known to Mahony; a journey that remained equally
tiresome whether the red earth rose as a thick red dust, or whether as
now it had turned to a mud like birdlime in which the wheels sank
almost to the axles. Arrived at Geelong they put up at an hotel, where
Purdy awaited them. Purdy had tramped down from Tarrangower, blanket on
back, and stood in need of a new rig-out from head to foot. Otherwise
his persistent ill-luck had left no mark on him.

The ceremony took place early the following morning, at the house of
the Wesleyan minister, the Anglican parson having been called away. The
Beamishes and Polly drove to town, a tight fit in a double buggy. On
the back seat, Jinny clung to and half supported a huge clothes-basket,
which contained the wedding-breakfast. Polly sat on her trunk by the
splashboard; and Tilly, crowded out, rode in on one of the cart-horses,
a coloured bed-quilt pinned round her waist to protect her skirts.

To Polly's disappointment neither her brother John nor his wife was
present; a letter came at the eleventh hour to say that Mrs. Emma was
unwell, and her husband did not care to leave her. Enclosed, however,
were ten