"She must never come again," said Polly to herself, as she bent over the
hair-chain she was making as a gift for John. "It is a pity, but it
seems as if Richard can't get on with those sort of people."
In his relief at having his house to himself, Mahony accepted even
Polly's absence with composure. To be perpetually in the company of
other people irked him beyond belief. A certain amount of privacy was as
vital to him as sleep.
Delighting in his new-found solitude, he put off from day to day the
disagreeable job of winding up his affairs and discovering how much--or
how little--ready money there would be to set sail with. Another thing,
some books he had sent home for, a year or more ago, came to hand at
this time, and gave him a fresh pretext for delay. There were eight or
nine volumes to unpack and cut the pages of. He ran from one to another,
sipping, devouring. Finally he cast anchor in a collected edition of his
old chief's writings on obstetrics--slipped in, this, as a gift from
the sender, a college chum--and over it, his feet on the table, his
dead pipe in the corner of his mouth, Mahony sat for the better part of
the night.
The effect of this master-mind on his was that of a spark on tinder.
Under the flash, he cursed for the hundredth time the folly he had been
guilty of in throwing up medicine. It was a vocation that had fitted him
as coursing fits a hound, or house-wifery a woman. The only excuse he
could find for his apostasy was that he had been caught in an epidemic
of unrest, which had swept through the country, upsetting the balance of
men's reason.
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