in her hand. She was busy cutting out a dress, and no table
being big enough for the purpose, had stretched the material on the
parlour floor. This would be the first new dress she had had since her
marriage; and it was high time, considering all the visiting and going
about that fell to her lot just now. Sara had sent the pattern up from
Melbourne, and John, hearing what was in the wind, had most kindly and
generously made her a present of the silk. Polly hoped she would not
bungle it in the cutting; but skirts were growing wider and wider, and
John had not reckoned with quite the newest fashion.

Steps in the passage made her note subconsciously that Ned had
arrived--Jerry had been in the house for the past three weeks, with a
sprained wrist. And at this moment her younger brother himself entered
the room, Trotty throned on his shoulder.

Picking his steps round the sea of stuff, Jerry sat down and lowered
Trotty to his knee. "Ned's grizzling for tea."

Polly did not reply; she was laying an odd-shaped piece of paper now
this way, now that.

For a while Jerry played with the child. Then he burst out: "I say,
Poll!" And since Polly paid no heed to his apostrophe:

"Richard says I can get back to work to-morrow."

"That's a good thing," answered his sister with an air of abstraction:
she had solved her puzzle to within half a yard.

Jerry cast a boyishly imploring glance at her back, and rubbed his chin
with his hand. "Poll, old girl--I say, wouldn't you put in a word for
me with Richard? I'm hanged if I want to go back to the claim. I'm sick
to death of digging."

At this Polly did raise her head, to regard him with grave eyes. "What!
tired of work already, Jerry? I don't know what Richard will say to
that, I'm sure. You had better speak to him yourself."

Again Jerry rubbed his chin. "That's just it--what's so beastly hard. I
know he'll say I ought to stick to it."

"So do I."

"Well, I'd rather groom the horse than that."

"But think how pleased you were at first!"

Jerry ruefully admitted it. "One expects to dig out gold like spuds;
while the real thing's enough to give you the blight. As for stopping a
wages-man all my life, I won't do it. I might just as well go home and
work in a Lancashire pit."

"But Ned--"

"Oh, Ned! Ned walks about with his head in the clouds. He's always
blowing of what he's GOING to do, and gets his steam off that way. I'm
different."

But Jerry's words fell on deaf ear