"Hope You Will Wish Me Luck While Enjoying My Little Gift," Said The
Letter, And Mistaking Its Double Meaning, I Felt Really Vexed With Our
Neighbour, And Passing The Marrow To Cheon, Reflected A Little Of His
Bristling Dignity As I Said:
"This is of no use to any one here, Cheon;
you had better take it away "; and as Cheon accepted it with a grateful
look, those about the verandah, and those without the garden, waited
expectantly.
But there was to be no unseemly rage this time. In dignified silence
Cheon received the marrow - a sinuous yellow insult, and as the homestead
waited he raised it above his head, and stalking majestically from us
towards the finished part of the fence, flung it from him in contemptuous
scorn, adding a satisfied snort as the marrow, striking the base of a
fence post, burst asunder, and the next moment, after a flashing swoop,
he was grovelling under the wires, making frantic efforts to reach a baby
bottle of whisky that had rolled from within the marrow away beyond the
fence. "Cognac!" he gasped, as he struggled, and then, as shouts greeted
his speedy success, he sat up, adding comically: "My word! Me close up
smash him Cognac." At the thought came his inevitable laughter, and as he
leant against the fence post, surrounded by the shattered marrow, he sat
hopelessly gurgling, and choking, and shaking, and hugging his bottle,
the very picture of a dissolute old Bacchanalian. (Cheon would have
excelled as a rapid change artist). And as Cheon gurgled, and
spluttered, and shook, the homestead rocked with yells of delight, while
Brown of the Bulls rolled and writhed in a canvas lounge, gasping between
his shouts: "Oh, chase him away, somebody; cover him up. Where did you
catch him?"
Finally Cheon scrambled to his feet, and, perspiring and exhausted,
presented the bottle to the Maluka. "My word, me cross fellow!" he said
weakly, and then, bubbling over again at the recollection, he chuckled:
"Close up smash him Cognac all right." And at the sound of the chuckle
Brown of the Bulls broke out afresh:
"Chase him away!" he yelled. "You'll kill me between you! I never struck
such a place! Is it a circus or a Wild West Show?"
Gravely the Maluka accepted the bottle, and with the same mock gravity
answered Brown of the Bulls. "It is neither, my man," he said; "neither
a circus, nor a Wild West Show. This is the land the poets sing about,
the land where dull despair is king."
Brown of the Bulls naturally wished "some of the poets were about now,"
and Dan, having joined the house party, found a fitting opportunity to
air one of his pet grievances.
"I've never done wishing some of them town chaps that write bush yarns
'ud come along and learn a thing or two," he said. "Most of 'em seem to
think that when we're not on the drink we're whipping the cat or
committing suicide." Rarely had Dan any excuse to offer for those "town
chaps," who, without troubling to learn "a thing or two," first, depict
the bush as a pandemonium of drunken orgies, painted women, low revenge,
remorse, and suicide; but being in a more magnanimous mood than usual, as
the men-folk flocked towards the Quarters he waited behind to add,
unconscious of any irony: "Of course, seeing it's what they're used to in
town, you can't expect 'em to know any better."
Then in the Quarters "Luck to our neighbour" was the toast - "luck," and
the hope that all his ventures might be as successfully carried through
as his practical joke. After that the Maluka gravely proposed "Cheon,"
and Cheon instantly became statuesque and dignified, to the further
diversion of Brown of the Bulls - gravely accepting a thimbleful for
himself, and, as gravely, drinking his own health, the Maluka just as
gravely "clinking glasses" with him. 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!" And then,
as if to prove that we are not always on the drink, or "whipping the cat,
or committing suicide," that we can love and live for others besides
self, Neaves' mate came down from the little rise beyond the slip-rails,
where he had spent his day carving a headstone out of a rough slab of
wood that now stood at the head of our sick traveller's grave.
Not always on the drink, or whipping the cat, or committing suicide, but
too often at the Parting of the Ways, for within another twelve hours the
travellers, Happy Dick, the Line Party, Neaves' mate, Brown of the Bulls,
and Mac, had all gone or were going their ways, leaving us to go
ours - Brown back to hold his bulls at the Red Lilies until further
showers should open up all roads, and Mac to "pick up Tam." But in the
meantime Dan had become Showman of the Showers.
"See anything?" he asked, soon after sun-up, waving his hands towards the
northern slip-rails, as we stood at the head of the thoroughfare speeding
our parting guests; and then he drew attention to the faintest greenish
tinge throughout the homestead enclosure - such a clean-washed-looking
enclosure now.
"That's going to be grass soon," he said, and, the sun coming out with
renewed vigour after another shower, by midday he had gathered a handful
of tiny blades half an inch in length with a chuckling "What did I tell
you?"
By the next midday, grass, inches tall, was rippling all around the
homestead in the now prevalent northwest breeze, and Dan was preparing
for a trip out-bush to see where the showers had fallen, and Mac and Tam
coming in as he went out, Mac greeted us with a jocular:
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