when he came in tired or with a headache, he could stretch himself at
full length. He was lying on it at this moment.

Polly, too, had reason to feel satisfied with the change. A handsome
little Broadwood, with a ruby-silk and carved-wood front, stood against
the wall of her drawing-room; gilt cornices surmounted the windows; and
from the centre of the ceiling hung a lustre-chandelier that was the
envy of every one who saw it: Mrs. Henry Ocock's was not a patch on it,
and yet had cost more. This time Mahony had virtually been able to give
his wife a free hand in her furnishing. And in her new spare room she
could put up no less than three guests!

Of course, these luxuries had not all rained on them at once. Several
months passed before Polly, on the threshold of her parlour, could
exclaim, with an artlessness that touched her husband deeply: "Never in
my life did I think I should have such a beautiful room!" Still, as
regarded money, the whole year had been a steady ascent. The nest-egg
he had left with the lawyer had served its purpose of chaining that old
hen, Fortune, to the spot. Ocock had invested and re-invested on his
behalf--now it was twenty "Koh-i-noors," now thirty "Consolidated
Beehives"--and Mahony was continually being agreeably surprised by the
margins it threw off in its metamorphoses. That came of his having
placed the matter in such competent hands. The lawyer had, for
instance, got him finally out of "Porepunkahs" in the nick of time--the
reef had not proved as open to the day as was expected--and pulled him
off, in the process, another three hundred odd. Compared with Ocock's
own takings, of course, his was a modest spoil; the lawyer had made a
fortune, and was now one of the wealthiest men in Ballarat. He had
built not only new and handsome offices on the crest of the hill, but
also, prior to his marriage, a fine dwelling-house standing in
extensive grounds on the farther side of Yuille's Swamp. Altogether it
had been a year of great and sweeping changes. People had gone up, gone
down--had changed places like children at a game of General Post. More
than one of Mahony's acquaintances had burnt his fingers. On the other
hand, old Devine, Polly's one-time market-gardener, had made his
thousands. There was actually talk of his standing for Parliament, in
which case his wife bid fair to be received at Government House. And
the pair of them with hardly an "h" between them!

From the sofa where he la