olly to herself, as she bent over
the hair-chain she was making as a gift for John. "It is a pity, but it
seems as if Richard can't get on with those sort of people."

In his relief at having his house to himself, Mahony accepted even
Polly's absence with composure. To be perpetually in the company of
other people irked him beyond belief. A certain amount of privacy was
as vital to him as sleep.

Delighting in his new-found solitude, he put off from day to day the
disagreeable job of winding up his affairs and discovering how much--or
how little--ready money there would be to set sail with. Another thing,
some books he had sent home for, a year or more ago, came to hand at
this time, and gave him a fresh pretext for delay. There were eight or
nine volumes to unpack and cut the pages of. He ran from one to
another, sipping, devouring. Finally he cast anchor in a collected
edition of his old chief's writings on obstetrics--slipped in, this, as
a gift from the sender, a college chum--and over it, his feet on the
table, his dead pipe in the corner of his mouth, Mahony sat for the
better part of the night.

The effect of this master-mind on his was that of a spark on tinder.
Under the flash, he cursed for the hundredth time the folly he had been
guilty of in throwing up medicine. It was a vocation that had fitted
him as coursing fits a hound, or house-wifery a woman. The only excuse
he could find for his apostasy was that he had been caught in an
epidemic of unrest, which had swept through the country, upsetting the
balance of men's reason. He had since wondered if the Great Exhibition
of '51 had not had something to do with it, by unduly whetting people's
imaginations; so that but a single cry of "Gold!" was needed, to loose
the spirit of vagrancy that lurks in every Briton's blood. His case had
perhaps been peculiar in this: no one had come forward to warn or
dissuade. His next relatives--mother and sisters--were, he thought,
glad to know him well away. In their eyes he had lowered himself by
taking up medicine; to them it was still of a piece with barber's pole
and cupping-basin. Before his time no member of the family had entered
any profession but the army. Oh, that infernal Irish pride! ... and
Irish poverty. It had choke-damped his youth, blighted the prospects of
his sisters. He could remember, as if it were yesterday, the jibes and
fleers called forth by the suit of a wealthy Dublin brewer, who had
been attracted