Reminded he was not alone by feeling the hand on his arm tremble, he
glanced down at his companion; and his eye was arrested by a neatly
parted head, of the glossiest black imaginable.
He pulled himself together. "Your cousins are excellent walkers."
"Oh, yes, very. But they are not my cousins."
Mahony pricked up his ears. "But you live here?"
"Yes. I help moth . . . Mrs. Beamish in the house."
But as if, with this, she had said too much, she grew tongue-tied again;
and there was nothing more to be made of her. Taking pity on her
timidity, Mahony tried to put her at ease by talking about himself. He
described his life on the diggings and the straits to which he was at
times reduced: the buttons affixed to his clothing by means of
gingerbeer-bottle wire; his periodic onslaughts on sock-darning; the
celebrated pudding it had taken him over four hours to make. And Polly,
listening to him, forgot her desire to run away. Instead, she could not
help laughing at the tales of his masculine shiftlessness. But as soon
as they came in view of the others, Tilly and Purdy sitting under one
parasol on a rock by the cave, Jinny standing and looking out rather
aggressively after the loiterers, she withdrew her arm.
"Moth . . . Mrs. Beamish will need me to help her with tea. And . . .
and WOULD you please walk back with Jinny?"
Before he could reply, she had turned and was hurrying away.
They got home from the cave at sundown, he with the ripe Jinny hanging a
dead weight on his arm, to find tea spread in the private parlour.
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