id Polly
strive to convince her that she was in error. "I don't know anyone
Richard has a higher opinion of!"

But it was a very uncomfortable state of things; and when a message
arrived over the electric telegraph announcing the dangerous illness of
Mrs. Beamish, distressed though she was by the news, Polly could not
help heaving a tiny sigh of relief. For Tilly was summoned back to
Melbourne with all speed, if she wished to see her mother alive.

They mingled their tears, Polly on her knees at the packing, Tilly
weeping whole-heartedly among the pillows of the bed.

"If it 'ad only been pa now, I shouldn't have felt it half so much,"
and she blew her nose for the hundredth time. "Pa was always such a rum
old stick. But poor ma ... when I THINK how she's toiled and moiled 'er
whole life long, to keep things going. She's 'ad all the pains and none
of the pleasures; and now, just when I was hoping to be able to give
'er a helping hand, THIS must happen."

The one bright spot in Tilly's grief was that the journey would be made
in a private conveyance. Mr. Ocock had bought a smart gig and was
driving her down himself; driving past the foundations of the new
house, along the seventy odd miles of road, right up to the door of the
mean lodging in a Collingwood back street, where the old Beamishes had
hidden their heads. "If only she's able to look out of the window and
see me dash up in my own turn-out!" said Tilly.

Polly fitted out a substantial luncheon-basket, and was keenest
sympathy to the last. But Mahony was a poor dissembler; and his sudden
thaw, as he assisted in the farewell preparations, could, Polly feared,
have been read aright by a child.

Tilly hugged Polly to her, and gave her kiss after kiss. "I shall NEVER
forget 'ow kind you've been, Poll, and all you've done for me. I've had
my disappointments 'ere, as you know; but p'raps after all it'll turn
out to be for the best. One o' the good sides to it anyhow is that you
and me'll be next-door neighbours, so to say, for the rest of our
lives. And I'll hope to see something of you, my dear, every blessed
day. But you'll not often catch me coming to this house, I can tell you
that! For, if you won't mind me saying so, Poll, I think you've got one
of the queerest sticks for a husband that ever walked this earth. Blows
hot one day and cold the next, for all the world like the wind in
spring. And without caring twopence whose corns 'e treads on."--Which,
though