Again, there was the question of literature. Books to Mahony were almost
as necessary as bread; to his girl-wife, on the other hand, they seemed
a somewhat needless luxury--less vital by far than the animals that
walked the floor. She took great care of the precious volumes Richard
had had carted up from Melbourne; but the cost of the transport was what
impressed her most. It was not an overstatement, thought Mahony, to say
that a stack of well-chopped, neatly piled wood meant more to Polly than
all the books ever written. Not that she did not enjoy a good story: her
work done, she liked few things better; and he often smiled at the ease
with which she lived herself into the world of make-believe, knowing, of
course, that it WAS make-believe and just a kind of humbug. But poetry,
and the higher fiction! Little Polly's professed love for poetry had
been merely a concession to the conventional idea of girlhood; or, at
best, such a burning wish to be all her Richard desired, that, at the
moment, she was convinced of the truth of what she said. But did he read
to her from his favourite authors her attention WOULD wander, in spite
of the efforts she made to pin it down.
Mahony declaimed:
'TIS THE SUNSET OF LIFE GIVES US MYSTICAL LORE,
AND COMING EVENTS CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE,
and his pleasure in the swing of the couplet was such that he repeated
it.
Polly wakened with a start. Her thoughts had been miles away--had been
back at the "Family Hotel".
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