Soon after the Fizzer left us the horse-teams came in, and went on, top-heavy with stores for “inside”; but the “Macs” were now thinking of the dry stages ahead, and were travelling at the exasperating rate of about four miles a day, as they “nursed the bullocks” through the good grass country.

Dan had lost interest in waggons, and was anxious to get among the cattle again; but with the trunks so near, the house growing rapidly, the days of sewing waiting, I refused point-blank to leave the homestead just then.

Dan tried to taunt me into action, and reviewed the “kennel” with critical eyes. “Never saw a dog makin’, its own chain before,” he said to the Măluka as I sat among billows of calico and mosquito netting. But the homemaking instinct is strong in a woman, and the musterers went out west without the missus. The Dandy being back at the Bitter Springs superintending the carting of new posts for the stockyard there, the missus was left in the care of Johnny and Cheon.

“Now we shan’t be long,” said Johnny, and Cheon, believing him, expressed great admiration for Johnny, and superintended the scrubbing of the walls, while I sat and sewed, yard after yard of oversewing, as never woman sewed before.

The walls were erected on what is known as the drop-slab-panel system—upright panels formed of three-foot slabs cut from the outside slice of tree trunks, and dropped horizontally, one above the other, between grooved posts—a simple arrangement, quickly run up and artistic in appearance—outside, a horizontally fluted surface, formed by the natural curves of the timber, and inside, flat, smooth walls. As in every third panel there was a door or a window, and as the horizontal slabs stopped within two feet of the ceiling, the building was exceedingly airy, and open on all sides.

Cheon, convinced that the system was all Johnny’s was delighted with his ingenuity. But as he insisted on the walls being scrubbed as soon as they were up, and before the doors and windows were in, Johnny had one or two good duckings, and narrowly escaped many more; for lubras’ methods of scrubbing are as full of surprises as all their methods.

First soap is rubbed on the dry boards, then vigorously scrubbed into a lather with wet brushes, and after that the lather is sluiced off with artificial waterspouts whizzed up the walls from full buckets. It was while the sluicing was in progress that Johnny had to be careful; for many buckets missed their mark, and the waterspouts shot out through the doorways and window frames.

Wearing a mackintosh, I did what I could to prevent surprises, but without much success. Johnny fortunately took it all as a matter of course. “It’s all in the good cause,” he chuckled, shaking himself like a water-spaniel after a particularly bad misadventure; and described the “performance” with great zest to the Măluka when he returned. The sight of the clean walls filled the Măluka also with zeal for the cause, and in the week that followed walls sprouted with corner shelves and brackets—three wooden kerosene cases became a handy series of pigeonholes for magazines and papers. One panel in the dining-room was completely filled with bookshelves, one above the other for our coming books. Great sheets of bark, stripped by the blacks from the Ti Tree forest, were packed a foot deep above the rafters to break the heat reflected from the iron roof, while beneath it the calico ceiling was tacked up. And all the time Johnny hammered and whistled and planed, finishing the bathroom and “getting on” with the office.

The Quiet Stockman coming in, was pressed into the service, and grew quite enthusiastic, suggesting substitutes for necessities, until I suggested cutting off the tail of every horse on the run, to get enough horsehair for a mattress.

“Believe the boss’ud do it himself if she asked him,” he said in the Quarters; and in his consternation suggested bangtailing the cattle during the musters.

“Just the thing,” Dan decided; and we soon saw, with his assistance, a vision of our future mattress walkin’ about the run on the ends of cows’ tails.

“Looks like it’s going to be a dead-heat,” Johnny said, still hammering, when the Dandy brought in word that the Macs were within twelve miles of the homestead. And when I announced next day that the dining-net was finished and ready for hanging, he also became wildly enthusiastic.

“Told you from the beginning we shouldn’t be long,” he said, flourishing a hammer and brimming over with suggestions for the hanging of the net. “Rope’ll never hold it,” he declared; “fencing wire’s the thing,” so fencing wire was used, and after a hard morning’s work pulling and straining the wire and securing it to uprights, the net was in its place, the calico roof smooth and flat against the ceiling, and its curtains hanging to the floor, with strong, straight saplings run through the folded hem to weigh it down. Cheon was brimming over with admiration for it.

“My word, boss! Missus plenty savey,” he said. (Cheon invariably discussed the missus in her presence.) “Chinaman woman no more savey likee that,” and bustling away, dinner was soon served inside the net.

Myriads of flies, balked in their desire, settled down on the outside, and while we enjoyed our dinner in peace and comfort, Cheon hovered about, like a huge bloated buzz fly himself, chuckling around the outside among the swarms of balked flies, or coming inside to see if “any fly sit down inside.”

“My word, boss! Hear him sing-out sing-out. Missus plenty savey,” he reiterated, and then calling a Chinese friend from the kitchen, stood over him, until he also declared that “missusblentysavey,” with good emphasis on theblenty.

The net was up by midday, and at ten o’clock at night the slow, dull clang of a bullock-bell crept out of the forest. Cheon was the first to hear it. “Bullocky come on,” he called, waddling to the house and waking us from our first sleep; and as the deep-throated bell boomed out again the Măluka said drowsily: “The homestead’s only won by a head. Mac’s at the Warlochs.”

At “fowl-sing-out” we were up, and found Bertie’s Nellie behind the black boys’ humpy shyly peeping round a corner. With childlike impetuosity she had scampered along the four miles from the Warlochs, only to be overcome with unaccountable shyness.

“Allo, missus!” was all she could find to say, and the remainder of the interview she filled in with wriggling and giggles.

Immediately after breakfast Mac splashed through the creek at a hand-gallop and, dashing up to the house, flung himself from his horse, the same impetuous, warmhearted “Brither Scot.”

“Patience rewarded at last,” he called in welcome; and when invited to “come ben the hoose to the dining-room,” was, as usual, full of congratulations. “My! We are some!” he said, examining every detail. But as he also said that “the Dandy could get the trunks right off if we liked to send him across with the dray,” we naturally “liked,” and Johnny and the Dandy harnessing up, went with him, and before long the verandah and rooms were piled with trunks.

Fortunately Dan was “bush” again among the cattle, or his heart would have broken at this new array of links for the chain.

Once the trunks were all in, Mac, the Dandy, and Johnny retired to the Quarters after a few more congratulations, Johnny continuing his flourishes all the way across. Cheon however, with his charming disregard for conventionality being interested, settled himself on one of the trunks to watch the opening up of the others.

To have ordered him away would have clouded his beaming happiness; so he remained, and told us exactly what he thought of our possessions, adding much to the pleasure of the opening of the trunks. If any woman would experience real pleasure, let her pack all her belongings into trunks—all but a couple of changes of everything—and go away out-bush, leaving them to follow “after the Wet” per bullock waggon, and when the reunion takes place the pleasure will be forthcoming. If she can find a Cheon to be present at the reunion, so much the better.

Some of our belongings Cheon thoroughly approved of; others were passed over as unworthy of notice; and others were held up to chuckling ridicule. A silver teapot was pounced upon with a cry of delight (tinware being considered far beneath the dignity of a missus, and seeing Sam had broken the china pot soon after its arrival, tinware had graced our board for some time), pictures were looked at askance, particularly an engraving of Psyche at the Pool; while the case for a set of carvers received boundless admiration, although the carvers in no way interested him.

The photographs of friends and relatives were looked carefully over, the womenfolk being judged by what they might bring in a Chinese matrimonial market.

“My word! That one good-looking. Him close up sixty pound longa China,” was rather disconcerting praise of a very particular lady friend.

A brass lamp was looked upon as a monument of solid wealth, “Him gold,” he decided, insisting it was in the face of all denials. “Him gold. Me savey gold all right. Me live longa California long time,” he said, bringing forward a most convincing argument; and, dismissing the subject with one of his Podsnapian waves, he decided that a silver-coloured composition flower-bowl in the form of a swan was solid silver; “Him sing out all a same silver,” he said, making it ring with a flick of his finger and thumb, when I differed from him, and knowing Cheon by now, we left it at that for the time being.

After wandering through several trunks and gloating over blouses, and skirts, and house-linen, and old friends the books were opened up, and before the Măluka became lost to the world Cheon favoured them with a passing glance. “Big mob book,” he said indifferently, and turned his attention to the last trunk of all.

Near the top was a silver filigree candlestick moulded into the form of a Convolvulus flower and leaf—a dainty little thing, but it appeared ridiculous to Cheon’s commonsense mind.

“Him silly fellow,” he scoffed, and appealed to the Măluka for his opinion: “him silly fellow? Eh boss?” he asked.

The Măluka was half-buried in books. “Um,” he murmured absently, and that clinched the matter for all time. “Boss bin talk silly fellow” Cheon said, with an approving nod toward the Măluka, and advised packing the candlestick away again. “Plenty room sit down longa box,” he said, truthfully enough, putting it into an enormous empty trunk and closing the lid, leaving the candlestick a piece of lonely splendour hidden under a bushel.

But the full glory of our possessions was now to burst upon Cheon. The trunk we were at was half filled with all sorts of cunning devices for kitchen use, intended for the mistress’s pantry of that commodious station home of past ignorant imagination. A mistress’s pantry forsooth, in a land where houses are superfluous and luxuries barred, and at a homestead where the mistress had long ceased to be anything but the little missus—something to rule or educate or take care of, according to the nature of her subordinates.

In a flash I knew all I had once been, and quailing before the awful proof before me, presented Cheon with the whole collection of tin and enamel ware, and packed him off to the kitchen before the Măluka had time to lose interest in the books.

Everything was exactly what Cheon most needed, and he accepted everything with gleeful chuckles—everything excepting a kerosene Primus burner for boiling a kettle. That he refused to touch. “Him go bang,” he explained, as usual explicit and picturesque in his English.

After gathering his treasures together he waddled away to the kitchen, and at afternoon tea we had sponge cakes, light and airy beyond all dreams of airy lightness, no one having yet combined the efforts of Cheon, a flour dredge, and an egg-beater, in his dreams. 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.

At intervals during the days that followed Cheon surveyed his treasures, and during these intervals the whirr of the flour dredge or egg-beater was heard from the kitchens, and invariably the whirr was followed by a low, distinct chuckle of appreciation.

All afternoon we worked, and by the evening the dining-room was transformed: blue cloths and lace runners on the deal side-table and improvised pigeon-holes; nicknacks here and there on tables and shelves and brackets; pictures on the walls; “kent” faces in photograph frames among the nicknacks; a folding carpet-seated armchair in a position of honour; cretonne curtains in the doorway between the rooms, and inside the shimmering white net a study in colour effect—blue and white matting on the floor, a crimson cloth on the table, and on the cloth Cheon’s “silver” swan sailing in a sea of purple, blue, and heliotrope water-lilies. But best of all were the books—row upon row of old familiar friends; nearly two hundred of them filling the shelved panel as they looked down upon us.

Mac was dazzled with the books. “Hadn’t seen so many together since he was a nipper”; and after we had introduced him to our favourites, we played with our new toys like a parcel of children, until supper time.

When supper was over we lit the lamp, and shutting doors and windows, shut the Sanguine Scot in with us, and made believe we were living once more within sound of the rumble of a great city. Childish behaviour, no doubt, but to be expected from folk who can find entertainment in the going to bed of fowls; but when the heart is happy it forgets to grow old.

“A lighted lamp and closed doors, and the outside world is what you will it to be,” the Măluka theorised, and to disprove it Mac drew attention to the distant booming of the bells that swung from the neck of his grazing bullocks.

“The city clocks,” we said. “We hear them distinctly at night.”

But the night was full of sounds all around the homestead, and Mac, determined to mock, joined in with the “Song of the Frogs.”

“Quart pot! Qua-rt-pot!” he croaked, as they sang outside in rumbling monotone.

“The roll of the tramcars,” the Măluka interpreted gravely, as the long flowing gutturals blended into each other; and Mac’s mood suddenly changing he entered into our sport, and soon put us to shame in make-believing; spoke of “pining for a breath of fresh air”; “hoped” to get away from the grime and dust of the city as soon as the session was over; wondered how he would shape “at camping out,” with an irrepressible chuckle. “Often thought I’d like to try it,” he said, and invited us to help him make up a camping party. “Be a change for us city chaps,” he suggested; and then exploding at what he called his “tomfoolery,” set the dining-net all a-quivering and shaking.

“Gone clean dilly, I believe,” he declared, after thinking that he had “better be making a move for the last train.”

Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again, and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it.

The waggons spelled for two days at the Warlochs, and we saw much of the “Macs.” Then they decided to “push on”; for not only were others farther “in” waiting for the waggons, but daily the dry stages were getting longer and drier; and the shorter his dry stages are, the better a bullock-puncher likes them.

With well-nursed bullocks, and a full complement of them—the “Macs” had twenty-two per waggon for their dry stages—a “thirty-five-mile dry” can be “rushed,” the waggoners getting under way by three o’clock one afternoon, travelling all night with a spell or two for the bullocks by the way, and “punching” them into water within twenty-four hours.