imal picked its way
among the impedimenta of the bush road. It concerned only those who had
money to spare. Months, too, must go by before, from even the most
promising of these co-operative affairs, any return was to be expected.
As for him, there still came days when he had not a five-pound note to
his name. It had been a delusion to suppose that, in accepting John's
offer, he was leaving money-troubles behind him. Despite Polly's
thrift, their improved style of life cost more than he had reckoned;
the patients, slow to come, were slower still to discharge their debts.
Moreover, he had not guessed how heavily the quarterly payments of
interest would weigh on him. With as good as no margin, with the fate
of every shilling decided beforehand, the saving up of thirty odd
pounds four times a year was a veritable achievement. He was always in
a quake lest he should not be able to get it together. No one suspected
what near shaves he had--not even Polly. The last time hardly bore
thinking about. At the eleventh hour he had unexpectedly found himself
several pounds short. He did not close an eye all night, and got up in
the morning as though for his own execution. Then, fortune favoured
him. A well-to-do butcher, his hearty: "What'll yours be?" at the
nearest public-house waved aside, had settled his bill off-hand. Mahony
could still feel the sudden lift of the black fog-cloud that had
enveloped him--the sense of bodily exhaustion that had succeeded to the
intolerable mental strain.

For the coming quarter-day he was better prepared--if, that was,
nothing out of the way happened. Of late he had been haunted by the
fear of illness. The long hours in the saddle did not suit him. He
ought to have a buggy, and a second horse. But there could be no
question of it in the meantime, or of a great deal else besides. He
wanted to buy Polly a piano, for instance; all her friends had pianos;
and she played and sang very prettily. She needed more dresses and
bonnets, too, than he was able to allow her, as well as a change to the
seaside in the summer heat. The first spare money he had should go
towards one or the other. He loved to give Polly pleasure; never was
such a contented little soul as she. And well for him that it was so.
To have had a complaining, even an impatient wife at his side, just
now, would have been unbearable. But Polly did not know what impatience
meant; her sunny temper, her fixed resolve to make the best of
everyt