you know what!" Tilly, sobbing noisily, wept on Polly's neck that she wished she was dead or at the bottom of the sea; and Polly, torn between pride and pain at Purdy's delinquency, could only kiss her several times without speaking.
The farewells buzzed and flew.
"Good-bye to you, little lass ...

beg pardon, Mrs.Dr.Mahony!"---- "Mind you write, Poll! I shall die to 'ear."---- "Ta-ta, little silly goosey, and AU REVOIR!"-- "Mind he don't pitch you out of the cart, Polly!"-- "Good-bye, Polly, my duck, and remember I'll come to you in a winkin', h'if and when ..." which speech on the part of Mrs.Beamish distressed Polly to the verge of tears.
But finally she was torn from their arms and hoisted into the cart; and Mahony, the reins in his hand, began to unstiffen from the wooden figure-head he had felt himself during the ceremony, and under the whirring tongues and whispered confidences of the women.
"And now, Polly, for home!" he said exultantly, when the largest pocket-handkerchief had shrunk to the size of a nit, and Polly had ceased to twist her neck for one last, last glimpse of her friends.
And then the bush, and the loneliness of the bush, closed round them.
It was the time of flowers--of fierce young growth after the fruitful winter rains.

The short-lived grass, green now as that of an English meadow, was picked out into patterns by the scarlet of the Running Postman; purple sarsaparilla festooned the stems of the scrub; there were vast natural paddocks, here of yellow everlastings, there of heaths in full bloom.

Compared with the dark, spindly foliage of the she-oaks, the ti-trees' waxy flowers stood out like orange-blossoms against firs.

On damp or marshy ground wattles were aflame: great quivering masses of softest gold.