("As if there weren't apples enough here!" thought Mary.)
He got a frog in his throat as he went on to paint in greater detail for her, who had left it so young, the intimate charm of the home country—the rich, green, dimpled countryside. And not till now did he grasp how sorely he had missed it. "Oh, believe me, to talk of 'going home' is no mere figure of speech, Mary!" In fancy he trod winding lanes that ran between giant hedges: hedges in tender bud, with dew on them; or snowed over with white mayflowers; or behung with the fairy webs and gossamer of early autumn, thick as twine beneath their load of moisture. He followed white roads that were banked with primroses and ran headlong down to the sea; he climbed the shoulder of a down on a spring morning, when the air was alive with larks carolling. But chiefly it was the greenness that called to him—the greenness of the greenest country in the world. Viewed from this distance, the homeland looked to him like one vast meadow. Oh, to tread its grass again!—not what one knew as grass here, a poor annual, that lasted for a few brief weeks; but lush meadow-grass, a foot high; or shaven emerald lawns on which ancient trees spread their shade; or the rank growth in old orchards, starry with wild flowers, on which fruit-blossoms fluttered down. He longed, too, for the exquisite finishedness of the mother country, the soft tints of cloud-veiled northern skies. His eyes ached, his brows had grown wrinkled from gazing on iron roofs set against the hard blue overhead; on dirty weatherboards innocent of paint; on higgledy-piggledy backyards and ramshackle fences; on the straggling landscape with its untidy trees—all the unrelieved ugliness, in short, of the colonial scene.
He stopped only for want of breath. Mary was silent. He waited. Still she did not speak.
He fell to earth with a bump, and was angry. "Come ... out with it! I suppose all this seems to you just the raving of a lunatic?"
"Oh, Richard, no. But a little ... well, a little unpractical. I never heard before of any one throwing up a good income because he didn't like the scenery. It's a step that needs the greatest consideration."
"Good God! Do you think I haven't considered it?—and from every angle? There isn't an argument for or against, that I haven't gone over a thousand and one times."
"And with never a word to me, Richard?" Mary was hurt; and showed it. "It really is hardly fair. For this is my home as well as yours.—But now listen. You're tired out, run down with the heat and that last attack of dysentery. Take a good holiday—stay away for three months if you like. Sail over to Hobart Town, or up to Sydney, you who'er so fond of the water. And when you come back strong and well we'll talk about all this again. I'm sure by then you'll see things with other eyes."
"And who's to look after the practice, pray?"
"Why, a LOCUM TENENS, of course. Or engage an assistant."
"Aha! you'd agree to that now, would you? I remember how opposed you were once to the idea."