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Mahony; you've treated me square enough. But doc., 'e's always thought 'imself a sight above one, an' when 'e does, 'e lets you feel it." This was more than Polly could brook. "And sighing and groaning as you have done to get home, Jim! You're a silly, ungrateful old man, even to hint at such a thing."
"Johnny never meant any harm. It was I who didn't know how to manage him," said Polly staunchly. "Why, Richard, what IS the matter?" For letting her arm fall Mahony had dashed to the other side of the road. "Good God, Polly, look at this!" "This" was a printed notice, nailed to a shed, which announced that a sale of frontages in Mair and Webster Streets would shortly be held.
The withdrawal of the money for Johnny's board would make a difference to their income. "Of course," returned Mahony easily, and was about to dismiss the subject. But Polly stood her ground. "Talking of money, Richard, I don't know whether you remember ... you've been so busy ... that it's only about a fortnight now till the second lot of interest falls due."
Had not two of the rooms fireplaces? And was there not a wash-house, with a real copper in it, behind the detached kitchen? Not to speak of a spare room! To the rear of the house a high paling-fence enclosed a good-sized yard. Mahony dreamed of a garden, Polly of keeping hens. There were no two happier people on Ballarat that autumn than the Mahonys.
He kept his temper, too, in all the fuss and ado of departure: the running to and fro after missing articles, the sitting on the lids of overflowing trunks, the strapping of carpet-bags, affixing of labels. Their luggage hoisted into a spring-cart, they themselves took their seats in the buggy and were driven to the railway station; and to himself Mahony murmured an all's-well that-ends-well.
On a huge poster the "Unicorn" offered to lunch free all those "thinking men" who registered their vote for "the one and only true democrat, the miners' friend and tyrants' foe, John Turnham." In the hope of avoiding a crush Mahony drove straight to the polling-booth.
To the average British mind this will smack of over-legislation, and serious Irishmen make the same complaint. And still, to quote Father Mahony, of Cork, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." The fact is, he is almost killed with kindness. He is weighed down by the multitude of benefactions.
But it's plain he suspects the old boy has made his pile and intends him to fork out," said Mahony carelessly; and, with this, dismissed the subject. Now that his own days in the colony were numbered, he no longer felt constrained to pump up a spurious interest in local affairs. He consigned them wholesale to that limbo in which, for him, they had always belonged.
Our loss was great; that of the enemy greater. The news of this, the most surprising event that has been heard of in recent ages, was brought to the King at Marly on the 9th of February, 1702, by Mahony. Soon after it arrived I heard of it, and at once hastened to the chateau, where I found a great buzzing and several groups of people talking. Mahony was closeted a long time with the King.
He had kept his eyes glued to the table-leg in speaking, and so saw neither his hearer's involuntary start at the damaging disclosure, nor the nervous tightening of the hand that lay along the arm of the chair. Mahony sat silent, balancing a paper-knife, and fighting down a feeling of extraordinary discomfort his very finger-tips curled under the strain.
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