But Polly would not capitulate right off. "I don't think it's very kind of you to talk like that, Richard," she said warmly. "People can't help their looks." She moved about the room putting things straight, and avoiding his eye. "As long as they mean well and are good.... But I think you would rather no one ever came to stay with us, at all."
Fixing her with meaning insistence and still smiling, Mahony opened his arms. The next moment Polly was on his knee, her face hidden in his shoulder. There she shed a few tears. "Oh, isn't she dreadful? I don't know WHAT I shall do with her. She's been serving behind the bar, Richard, for more than a year. And she's come expecting to be taken everywhere and to have any amount of gaiety."
At coach-time she had dragged a reluctant Purdy to the office. But as soon as he caught sight of Tilly: "On the box, Richard, beside the driver, with her hair all towsy-wowsy in the wind—he just said: 'Oh, lor, Polly!' and disappeared, and that was the last I saw of him. I don't know how I should have got on if it hadn't been for old Mr. Ocock, who was down meeting a parcel. He was most kind; he helped us home with her carpet-bag, and saw after her trunk. And, oh dear, what do you think? When he was going away he said to me in the passage—so loud I'm sure Tilly must have heard him—he said: 'Well! that's something like a figure of a female this time, Mrs. Doc. As fine a young woman as ever I see!'"
And Polly hid her face again; and husband and wife laughed in concert.
Chapter VIII
That night a great storm rose. Mahony, sitting reading after everyone else had retired, saw it coming, and lamp in hand went round the house to secure hasps and catches; then stood at the window to watch the storm's approach. In one half of the sky the stars were still peacefully alight; the other was hidden by a dense cloud, which came racing along like a giant bat with outspread wings, devouring the stars in its flight. The storm broke; there was a sudden shrill screeching, a grinding, piping, whistling, and the wind hurled itself against the house as if to level it with the ground; failing in this, it banged and battered, making windows and doors shake like loose teeth in their sockets. Then it swept by to wreak its fury elsewhere, and there was a grateful lull out of which burst a peal of thunder. And now peal followed peal, and the face of the sky, with its masses of swirling, frothy cloud, resembled an angry sea. The lightning ripped it in fierce zigzags, darting out hundreds of spectral fangs. It was a magnificent sight.
Polly came running to see where he was, the child cried, Miss Tilly opened her door by a hand's-breadth, and thrust a red, puffy face, framed in curl-twists, through the crack. Nobody thought of sleep while the commotion lasted, for fear of fire: once alight, these exposed little wooden houses blazed up like heaps of shavings. The clock-hands pointed to one before the storm showed signs of abating. Now, the rain was pouring down, making an ear-splitting din on the iron roof and leaping from every gutter and spout. It had turned very cold. Mahony shivered as he got into bed.
He seemed hardly to have closed an eye when he was wakened by a loud knocking; at the same time the wire of the night-bell was almost wrenched in two. He sat up and looked at his watch. It wanted a few minutes to three; the rain was still falling in torrents, the wind sighed and moaned. Wild horses should not drag him out on such a night! Thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his dressing-gown, he threw up the parlour window. "Who's there?" The hiss of the rain cut his words through.
A figure on the doorstep turned at the sound. "Is this a doctor's? I wuz sent here. Doctor! for God's sake ..."