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It was no use trying to wriggle from under Cheon's foot once he put it down. At the slightest neglect of duty, lubras or boys were marshalled and kept relentlessly to their work until he was satisfied; and woe betide the lubras who had neglected to wash hands, and pail and cow, before sitting down to their milking. The very fowls that laid out-bush gained nothing by their subtlety.
Like Dan, we saw little sense in "heaving rocks round," and went back to the camp and the business of packing up for the homestead. About next midday we rode into the homestead thoroughfare, where Cheon and Tiddle'ums welcomed us with enthusiasm, but Cheon's enthusiasm turned to indignation when he found we were only in for a day or two. "What's 'er matter?" he ejaculated.
It was late in September when Dan came in, and four weeks slipped away with the concerns of cattle and cattle-buyers and cattle-duffers, and as we moved hither and thither the water-melons leafed and blossomed and fruited to Billy's delight, and Cheon's undisguised amazement and the line party, creeping on, crept first into our borders and then into camp at the Warlochs, and Happy Dick's visits, dog-fights, and cribbage became part of the station routine.
As a matter of course, it left a sweltering awfulness behind it, but it was a promise of better things; and even as Dan was inquiring with a chuckle "whether that chap in the Quarters had got a bath out of it," a second pelting fury rushed over us, filling Cheon's heart with joy, and Billy with importance.
Then Cheon's kitchen decorations were renewed and added to; and after that further suggestions suggested and attended to. Everything that could be done was done, and by eight o'clock all was ready for Cheon's triumphs, all but our appetites and time of day.
The first two days were spent in a whirlwind of dust and rubbish, turned out from unguessed-at recesses, and Cheon's jovial humour suiting his helpers to a nicety, the rubbish was dealt with amid shouts of delight and enjoyment; until Jimmy, losing his head in his lightness of heart, dug Cheon in the ribs, and, waving a stick over his head, yelled in mock fierceness: "Me wild-fellow, black fellow.
Then came Cheon's turn, and gradually and cleverly his triumphs were displayed. To begin with, we were served to clear soup "just to tickle your palates," the Maluka announced, as Cheon in a hoarse whisper instructed him to serve "little-fellow-helps" anxious that none of the keenness should be taken from our appetites.
"Cognac!" he would call, and also invariably, Dan made a great show of expectant haste, and a corresponding show of disappointment, when the teapot only was forthcoming. But Cheon's little joke and the afternoon tea were only interludes in the heat and thirst and dust.
Right up to the house verandah they came, and the letter was presented to the Maluka, and the marrow to the missus in the presence of Cheon's glare and an intense silence; for most of the bush-folk had heard of the cabbage insult. Cheon had seen to that.
And Cheon's heart being as light as his cookery, in his glee he made a little joke at the expense of the Quarters, summoning all there to afternoon tea with a chuckling call of "Cognac!" chuckles that increased tenfold at the mock haste of the Quarters. A little joke, by the way, that never lost in freshness as the months went by.
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