Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/203

Rh back to the kerb from the middle of the street—me trying to hang on to her all the time—till I'd get rippin' wild, and go for her.

"Damn it all!" I said, "why can't you trust to me and come when I tell you? One would think I came out with the fixed intention of getting you run over, and getting rid of you." And Mary would lose her temper, and say, "Ah, well, Joe, I sometimes think you do want to get rid of me, the way you go on," or something like that, and our pleasure would be spoilt for the day. But with the children! What with one or the other of them always whimpering or crying, and Jim always yelling when we got into a tram, or 'bus, or boat, or into some place that he didn't trust, or when we reckoned we were lost, which was about every twenty minutes—and, what with Mary losing her temper every time I lost mine, there were times when I really wished in my heart I was on my own. . . . Ah, well, there came a day when I had my wish.

I forgot about the hard life in huts and camps in the Bush, and the bitter, heart-breaking struggle she'd shared with me since we were married, and how she'd slaved and fought through the blazing drought on that wretched, lonely selection, in the first year, while I was away with the team most of the time—how she'd stuck to me through thick and thin. I only thought she was very irritable and selfish and unreasonable, and that she ought to be able to keep the children in better order. I believed that she had spoilt them. And I was wild to think how our holiday was being wasted,