Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/202

190 settle down in your own home, and make it bright, and be contented?"

"Well, what's the use of furniture, or a new house for that matter, when there's no one but Bushies to look at it?" I said. "We might just as well live in a tent. What's the use of burying ourselves in the blasted Bush altogether? We've got two pretty children, and you're good-looking yet, Mary, and it isn't as if we were an old man and woman."

"I'm nearly twenty-seven," said Mary. "I only thought of it to-day, and it came like a shock to me. I feel like an old woman."

I'd learned enough of women not to argue with Mary while she was in that mood. The fact of the matter was that after the first trip or two she didn't seem to enjoy herself in the city. You see, she always insisted on taking the children with her. She couldn't bring herself to trust them at home with the girl, and I knew that if she did, she'd be worrying all the time, and spoil her pleasure and mine, and so we always took them with us. But they were an awful drag in the city. Mary wouldn't trust 'em with a strange woman or girl, except perhaps for a few hours when they were in bed, and we went to one of the theatres. So we always carted them round the town with us. I soon got tired of humping one or the other of 'em. But crossing the streets was the worst. It was bad enough with Mary when we were out alone. She would hang back when the crossing was clear, and suddenly make a start when there was a rush of traffic, and baulk as often as not, and sometimes turn and run