"And you, too, dear Tilly," urged little Polly, proceeding with her
farewells. "For, mind, you promised. And I won't forget to . . . you
know what!"
Tilly, sobbing noisily, wept on Polly's neck that she wished she was
dead or at the bottom of the sea; and Polly, torn between pride and pain
at Purdy's delinquency, could only kiss her several times without
speaking.
The farewells buzzed and flew.
"Good-bye to you, little lass . . . beg pardon, Mrs. Dr. Mahony!"----
"Mind you write, Poll! I shall die to 'ear."----
"Ta-ta, little silly goosey, and AU REVOIR!"--"Mind he don't pitch you
out of the cart, Polly!"--"Good-bye, Polly, my duck, and remember I'll
come to you in a winkin', h'if and when . . ." which speech on the part
of Mrs. Beamish distressed Polly to the verge of tears.
But finally she was torn from their arms and hoisted into the cart; and
Mahony, the reins in his hand, began to unstiffen from the wooden
figure-head he had felt himself during the ceremony, and under the
whirring tongues and whispered confidences of the women.
"And now, Polly, for home!" he said exultantly, when the largest
pocket-handkerchief had shrunk to the size of a nit, and Polly had ceased
to twist her neck for one last, last glimpse of her friends.
And then the bush, and the loneliness of the bush, closed round them.
It was the time of flowers--of fierce young growth after the fruitful
winter rains. The short-lived grass, green now as that of an English
meadow, was picked out into patterns by the scarlet of the Running
Postman; purple sarsaparilla festooned the stems of the scrub; there
were vast natural paddocks, here of yellow everlastings, there of heaths
in full bloom.
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