its and idiosyncrasies
she had adapted herself implicitly--but this came easy; for she was
sure everything Richard did was right, and that his way of looking at
things was the one and only way. So there was no room for discord
between them. By this time Polly could laugh over the dismay of her
first homecoming: the pitch-dark night and unfamiliar road, the racket
of the serenade, the apparition of the great spider: now, all this
might have happened to somebody else, not Polly Mahony. Her dislike of
things that creep and crawl was, it is true, inborn, and persisted; but
nowadays if one of the many "triantelopes" that infested the roof
showed its hairy legs, she had only to call Hempel, and out the latter
would pop with a broomstick, to do away with the creature. If a
scorpion or a centipede wriggled from under a log, the cry of "Tom!"
would bring the idle lad next door double-quick over the fence. Polly
had learnt not to summon her husband on these occasions; for Richard
held to the maxim: "Live and let live." If at night a tarantula
appeared on the bedroom-wall, he caught it in a covered glass and
carried it outside: "Just to come in again," was her rueful reflection.
But indeed Polly was surrounded by willing helpers. And small wonder,
thought Mahony. Her young nerves were so sound that Hempel's dry cough
never grated them: she doctored him and fussed over him, and was
worried that she could not cure him. She met Long Jim's grumbles with a
sunny face, and listened patiently to his forebodings that he would
never see "home" or his old woman again. She even brought out a clumsy
good-will in the young varmint Tom; nor did his old father's want of
refinement repel her.

"But, Richard, he's such a kind old man," she met her husband's
admission of this stumbling-block. "And it isn't his fault that he
wasn't properly educated. He has had to work for his living ever since
he was twelve years old."

And Mr. Ocock cried quits by remarking confidentially: "That little
lady o' yours 'as got 'er 'eadpiece screwed on the right way. It beats
me, doc., why you don't take 'er inter the store and learn 'er the
bizness. No offence, I'm sure," he made haste to add, disconcerted by
Mahony's cold stare.

Had anyone at this date tried to tell Polly she lived in a mean, rough
home, he would have had a poor reception. Polly was long since certain
that not a house on the diggings could compare with theirs. This was a
trait Mahony loved in h