No
son of his should go to sea, he was damned if they should! For, like
many another who has yielded to the wandering passion in his youth, John
had small mercy on it when it reared its head in his descendants.
Chapter IX
Henry Ocock was pressing for a second opinion; his wife had been in poor
health since the birth of her last child. Mahony drove to Plevna House
one morning between nine and ten o'clock.
A thankless task lay before him. Mrs. Henry's case had been a fruitful
source of worry to him; and he now saw nothing for it but a straight
talk with Henry himself.
He drove past what had once been the Great Swamp. From a bed of
cattle-ploughed mud interspersed with reedy water-holes; in summer a dry
and dust-swept hollow: from this, the vast natural depression had been
transformed into a graceful lake, some three hundred acres in extent. On
its surface pleasure boats lay at their moorings by jetties and
boatsheds; groups of stiff-necked swans sailed or ducked and straddled;
while shady walks followed the banks, where the whiplike branches of the
willows, showing shoots of tenderest green, trailed in the water or
swayed like loose harp-strings to the breeze.
All the houses that had sprung up round Lake Wendouree had well-stocked
spreading grounds; but Ocock's outdid the rest. The groom opening a pair
of decorative iron gates which were the showpiece of the neighbourhood,
Mahony turned in and drove past exotic firs, Moreton Bay fig-trees and
araucarias; past cherished English hollies growing side by side with
giant cacti.
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