Oh lor! What do you say to that, eh?
Unfurnished in the upper storey, what? Heh, heh, heh!"
Chapter III
How truly "home" the poor little gimcrack shanty had become to him,
Mahony grasped only when he once more crossed its threshold and Polly's
arms lay round his neck.
His search for Johnny Ocock had detained him in Melbourne for over a
week. Under the guidance of young Grindle he had scoured the city, not
omitting even the dens of infamy in the Chinese quarter; and he did not
know which to be more saddened by: the revolting sights he saw, or his
guide's proud familiarity with every shade of vice. But nothing could be
heard of the missing lad; and at the suggestion of Henry Ocock he put an
advertisement in the ARGUS, offering a substantial reward for news of
Johnny alive or dead.
While waiting to see what this would bring forth, he paid a visit to
John Turnham. It had not been part of his scheme to trouble his new
relatives on this occasion; he bore them a grudge for the way they had
met Polly's overture. But he was at his wits' end how to kill time:
chafing at the delay was his main employment, if he were not worrying
over the thought of having to appear before old Ocock without his son.
So, one midday he called at Turnham's place of business in Flinders
Lane, and was affably received by John, who carried him off to lunch at
the Melbourne Club. Turnham was a warm partisan of the diggers' cause.
He had addressed a mass meeting held in Melbourne, soon after the fight
on the Eureka; and he now roundly condemned the government's policy of
repression.
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