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Cheon had sent the eggs out with the cabbage, and I had hidden them away, intending to spring a surprise on the men-folk at breakfast. "How many eggs shall I boil for you, Dan?" I said airily, springing my surprise in this way on all the camp. But Dan, wheeling with an exclamation of pleasure, sprung a surprise of his own on the missus. "Eggs!" he said. "Good enough! How many?
But we found fried balls of minced collops, which Cheon hastened to explain would have been sausages if only he had had skins to pack them into. "Him close up sausage!" he assured us, but that anxious quaver was back in his voice, and to banish all clouds from his loyal old heart, we ate heartily of the collops, declaring they were sausages in all BUT skins.
Mis-sus!" at midday, with changes rung at "Bress-fass" or "Suppar"; and no written menu being at its service, Cheon supplied a chanted one, so that before we sat down to the first course we should know all others that were to come. The only disadvantage we could associate with his coming was that by some means Jimmy's Nellie had got on to the staff.
And from that day to this when Cheon wishes to place the Maluka on a fitting pedestal, he ends his long, long tale with a triumphant: "Boss bin knock glass longa me one time." Happy Dick and Peter filled in time for the Quarters until sundown, when Cheon announced supper there with an inspired call of "Cognac!"
Then a traveller coming in with the news that heavy ram had fallen in Darwin news gleaned from the gossiping wire Cheon was filled with jealous fury at the good fortune of Darwin, and taunted Billy with rain-making taunts.
"A year ago, Cheon," we said "there was no Cheon in our lives," and Cheon pitied our former forlorn condition as only Cheon could, at the same time asking us what could be expected of one of Sam's ways and caste.
"Surely the missus was not going?" he said; and next day we left him at the homestead, a lonely figure, seated on an overturned bucket, disconsolate and fearing the worst. Cheon often favoured an upside-down bucket for a seat. Nothing more uncomfortable for a fat man can be imagined, yet Cheon sat on his rickety perch, for the most part chuckling and happy.
"Just a year since you first put foot on this verandah," he said, and that reminiscence brought into the Maluka's eyes that deep look of bush comradeship, as he added: "And became just One of Us." Before long Mac was reminding us that a year ago she was wrestling with the servant question, and Cheon coming by, we indulged in a negative anniversary.
Altogether the morning passed quickly and merrily, any time Cheon left us being spent in making our personal appearance worthy of the feast. Scissors and hand-glasses were borrowed, and hair cut, and chins shaved, until we feared our Christmas guests would look like convicts. Then the Dandy producing blacking brushes, boots that had never seen blacking before, shone like ebony.
But before the other could be claimed Cheon had opened the last eighty-pound chest of tea, and the homestead fearing the supply might not be equal to the demands of the Wet, the Dandy was dispatched in all haste for an extra loading of stores. And all through his absence, as before it, and before the Fizzer's visit, Dan and the elements "kept things humming."
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