Shaken all to pieces with the awful overland journey, more dead than alive, I reached home a day or two after him, and discovered him calmly digging the garden, as if he had forgotten my very existence. When he saw me he smiled in an odd, constrained way, and said, as though it didn't matter one way or the other: "Well, Polly? Had about enough of it?"
Angry as I was with him, I could not maintain any dignity at all—I was too spent and weary. I broke down completely, and he took me into the tool-shed to comfort me—took me into his arms, where I had simply ached to be ever since I had left them, driven out by that detestable little scheming, mischief-making snake-in-the-grass.
"Oh," I sobbed, when I could find words and strength to utter them, "how could you leave me behind? How could you abandon me like that, when I was so ill and unhappy?"
"Because," said he, "you wanted to be left. You distinctly asked and were determined to be left. As for abandoning—it's I that was abandoned, it seems to me."
"You knew I did not want to be left," I urged—for of course he knew. "You must have seen that I only did it because I was vexed."
"And what were you vexed about?" he inquired. "I must be too dense and stupid for anything, but I'll be shot if I can understand you this time, Polly."
I told him that he was dense and stupid indeed, or he would not need to ask the question. But when I told him, further, what it was that had vexed me, he said that in some ways, when it came to denseness and stupidity, he was not a patch on me.
Of course it was not his fault in the very least. It was all hers.
P.S.—I have forgiven her now. Poor thing, it was only a manner with her; she meant no harm. I did not see it then—no one could have seen it, and I do not blame myself for being imposed on by appearances that would have deceived a very angel, which I confess I am not, though the least suspicious and uncharitable of women—but I became convinced of it afterwards.