Being quite determined not to have another voyage with her, and not wishing to say nasty things to him about it, I was glad when an old acquaintance, paying us a call on board, asked me to stay awhile with her, for the further benefit of my health, representing that the time covered by the sea trip was all too short to recruit in. "Thank you very much," I answered, on the spur of the moment. "I really think I will. I was never in Sydney but once, and then I had no chance to see the beauties of the place, of which I have heard so much; and I daresay it would do me good to have a longer change." I was aware of Tom's utter, silent astonishment, but I would not look at him; I left him to read the riddle for himself. When he spoke it was to quietly fall in with the proposal, adding suggestions that would have made it difficult for me to draw back if I had wanted to do so. He was so ready to leave me, indeed, that I fancied he _wanted_ to get rid of me--of course he did not, but any one would have thought so--and naturally that made me bitter. I spoke but little to him afterwards, and he was certainly cold to me---he seemed to divine my suspicions and to resent them--and I did not go to see him off; I could not. In short, our holiday was entirely and irreparably ruined. I believe I cried nearly the whole time that I was in Sydney. It did seem hard, in my state of health and under the sad circumstances, to be stranded amongst strangers, who did not understand my sorrows, nor my habits of life, and gave me none of the little pettings and coddlings that I needed and was accustomed to; and the thought of that woman going home with Tom, having the deck cabin, sitting on the bridge with him of nights, making free with the whole ship, usurping my place and privileges, drove me simply frantic--until one day I met her in the street, and found she had not gone with him after all. 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."