Entering the first eating-house they could find in the dingy street which led from the docks, they were brought a great black pot of tea, piles of ready-buttered bread, and a dish of thick, briny bacon with eggs. Though the fare was rough it was cleanly served, and Juley ate and drank greedily. As she grew older and more prone to exhaustion, food seemed to act more and more quickly upon her as a stimulant. Often now she would climb the steps at home, so weary from shopping and the steep hill that she had to sink down on one of the lobby chairs with all her parcels still in her arms. But if there was food ready for her she would devour it and feel immediately revived. At the same time, she always ate under protest. She was growing stouter, becoming heavy about the hips, like her elder sister Perdy, but she had not Perdy’s agility. She deplored her heaviness and tried to deny herself starchy food. But if there was one thing Juley loved, it was a potato. Early in the meal she would utterly refuse to partake of that vegetable. Then she would declare for “just half a one, for a treat, and not to waste the gravy”: and after that, when she thought no one was looking, she would help herself to a small quantity time after time. To make up for this “sinful self-indulgence” she would dose herself between whiles with patent medicines. She had a dread of internal trouble especially of such kind as would involve any operation, but it was illness, not death that she feared. She was quite ready, she said, when this heavy, fleshly tabernacle should be worn out, to go. She did not wish to grow old and a burden. In speaking of Heaven she had still the face of a young girl.

But while Juley restored herself there behind the wharf, recovering energy with each mouthful in the sordid little shop, Joanna could hardly touch anything. With mechanical persistence she kept trying to imagine the moving away of Sholto’s ship at dawn, and could not. She could only see it rooted there by the wharf for ever and ever. It was like a nightmare. She could not believe in Australia nor in the ship’s power to sail there, nor in Sholto’s continued existence. Really she was delirious with exhaustion.