"Wouldn't want to if you didn't, so to speak? Oh, Mrs Somers is all right. She's a fine woman, she is. I suppose I ought to say lady, but I prefer a woman, myself, to a lady, any day. And Mrs Somers is a woman all over—she is that. I'm sorry for my own sake and Vicky's sake that she's going. I'm sorry for Australia's sake. A woman like that ought to stop in a new country like this and breed sons for us. That's what we want."
"I suppose if she wanted to stop and breed sons she would," said Richard coldly.
"They'd have to be your sons, that's the trouble, old man. And how's she going to manage that if you're giving us the go-by?"
Richard spent the afternoon going round to the Customs House and to the American Consulate with his passport, and visiting the shipping office to get a plan of the boat. He went swiftly from place to place. There were no difficulties: only both the Customs House and the Consulate wanted photographs and Harriet's own signature. She would have to come up personally.
He wanted to go now. He wanted to go quickly. But it was no good, he could not get off for another month, so he must preserve his soul in patience.
"No," said Richard to himself, thinking of Kangaroo. "I don't love him—I detest him. He can die. I'm glad he is dying. And I don't like Jack either. Not a bit. In fact I like nobody. I love nobody and I like nobody, and there's the end of it, as far as I'm concerned. And if I go round 'loving' anybody else, or even 'liking' them, I deserve a kick in the guts like Kangaroo."
And yet, when he went over to the Zoo, on the other side of the harbour—and the warm sun shone on the rocks and the mimosa bloom, and he saw the animals, the tenderness came back. A girl he had met, a steamer-acquaintance, had given him a packet of little white extra-strong peppermint sweets. The animals liked them. The grizzly bear caught them and ate them with excitement, panting after the hotness of the strong peppermint, and opening his mouth wide, wide, for more. And one golden brown old-man kangaroo, with his great earth-cleaving tail and his little hanging hands, hopped up to the fence and lifted his sensitive nose quivering, and gently nibbled the sweet
