Page 291 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

‘For insubordination! Pardon me, my dear young lady,
did I understand you rightly?’
‘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 begin-
ning, my dear Miss Vickers, to find myself indeed at the
antipodes.’
‘Society here is different from society in England, I be-
lieve. 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 read-
ing?’
‘‘Paul et Virginie’. I have read it before in English.’

0 For the Term of His Natural Life