They started away towards him, looking sheepishly at my wife as they did so; but Billy finding occasion to give counter-orders, said: “But you needn’t come until you put the cockatoos away, and stuck the iguana in a barrel, and put the hose up for—for her.”
He watched them obey his orders, his head in the air the while, and when they had finished, and were come towards him, he again took off his hat, and they all left her standing alone in the garden.
Then she laughed a little oddly to herself, and stood picking to pieces the wet leaves of a geranium, looking after the three. After a little she came slowly over to us. “Well,” said I, feigning great irony, “all loves must have their day, both old and new. You see how they’ve deserted you. Yet you smile at it!”
“Indeed, my lord and master,” she said, “it is not a thing to laugh at. It’s very serious.”
“And what has broken the charm of your companionship?” I asked.
“The mere matter of the fabled Bunyip. He claimed that he had seen it, and I doubted his word. Had it been you it would not have mattered. You would have turned the other cheek, you are so tame. But he has fire and soul, and so we quarrelled.”
“And your other lovers turned tail,” I maliciously, said.
“Which only shows how superior he is,” was her reply. “If you had been in the case they would never have left me.”
“Oh, oh!” blurted Mulholland, “I am better out of this; for I little care to be called as a witness in divorce.” He rose from his chair, but I pushed him back, and he did not leave till “the cool of the evening.”
The next morning, at breakfast-time, a rouseabout brought us a piece of paper which had been nailed to the sandal-tree. On it was written: