“Yes, insubordination. He is her assigned servant, you know,” said Sylvia, as if such a condition of things was the most ordinary in the world, “and if he misbehaves himself, she sends him back to the road-gang.”
The Reverend Mr. Meekin opened his mild eyes very wide indeed. “What an extraordinary anomaly! I am beginning, my dear Miss Vickers, to find myself indeed at the antipodes.”
“Society here is different from society in England, I believe. Most new arrivals say so,” returned Sylvia quietly.
“But for a wife to imprison her husband, my dear young lady!”
“She can have him flogged if she likes. Danny has been flogged. But then his wife is a bad woman. He was very silly to marry her; but you can't reason with an old man in love, Mr. Meekin.”
Mr. Meekin's Christian brow had grown crimson, and his decorous blood tingled to his finger-tips. To hear a young lady talk in such an open way was terrible. Why, in reading the Decalogue from the altar, Mr. Meekin was accustomed to soften one indecent prohibition, lest its uncompromising plainness of speech might offend the delicate sensibilities of his female souls! He turned from the dangerous theme without an instant's pause, for wonder at the strange power accorded to Hobart Town “free” wives. “You have been reading?”
“'Paul et Virginie'. I have read it before in English.”
“Ah, you read French, then, my dear young lady?”
“Not very well. I had a master for some months, but papa had to send him back to the gaol again. He stole a silver tankard out of the dining-room.”
“A French master! Stole—”