"I can't, Maude; I must be at home, as well as you. You won't come to me for Christmas, Tony?"
"I don't think so, Polly—many thanks," he answered. "I expect my father will want me here." The fact was, he had too many interests in Melbourne to wish to leave at present.
"Well, come when you can, dear old fellow. I want to have you all to myself, if it's only for a few days."
"I will, Polly, I will. Good-bye, and take care of yourself. Are you really going away before we come back?"
"At the end of the week, Tony. I have been away too long—all your fault, bad boy. Well, good-bye again. Bon voyage, everybody!"
The town clock was striking the quarter before noon when she re-entered her carriage at Spencer Street, and it occurred to her to drive to the tea-room, to see how Jenny was getting on. Like Tony, she had been forgetting and deserting her protégée during the bustle of the last few weeks, and felt a twinge of self-reproach in consequence.
Entering the room, which fortunately chanced to have no customer at the moment, she was surprised to see Jenny sitting, or rather lying, in one of the low chairs, with her head laid back and her eyes closed, her chest slowly rising and falling in heavy, dumb sobs—evident symptoms of some sort of hysterical collapse. Sarah and her mother were hanging over her in great alarm and distress, as at a spectacle they were wholly unused to, Mrs. Liddon persuading her to drink some brandy and water which the landlady had hastily produced.
"Oh, what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Oxenham, hurrying forward. "What ails Jenny? Oh, poor child, how ill she looks!"
"She's just worn out," said Mrs. Liddon. "I've seen it coming on for weeks, and nothing that I could say would make her take care of herself. She will come here and work when she's not fit to stand. We wanted her to stay at home this morning, but no—she wouldn't listen to us."
Jenny struggled to sit up and shake herself together. "Oh, mother, don't scold me," she said. "It's just the heat, I think. It's nothing. I shall be right in a moment I—I—oh, I am a fool! Mrs. Oxenham, I am so sorry—so ashamed——"