Eh boss?" he asked,
moon-faced and serious.
"Please yourself!" the Maluka laughed, and with a flash of white teeth
and an infectious chuckle Cheon laughed and nodded back; then, still
chuckling, he waddled away to the kitchen and took possession there,
while we went to our respective dinners, little guessing that the
truest-hearted, most faithful, most loyal old "josser" had waddled into
our lives.
CHAPTER XI
Cheon rose at cock-crow ("fowl-sing-out," he preferred to call it), and
began his duties by scornfully refusing Sam's bland offer of instruction
in the "ways of the homestead."
"Me savey all about," he said, with a majestic wave of his hands, after
expressing supreme contempt for Sam's caste and ways; so Sam applied for
his cheque, shook hands all round, and withdrew smilingly.
Sam's account being satisfactorily "squared," Cheon's name was then
formally entered in the station books as cook and gardener, at
twenty-five shillings a week. That was the only vacancy he ever filled
in the books; but in our life at the homestead he filled almost every
vacancy that required filling, and there were many.
There was nothing he could not and did not do for our good, and it was
well that he refused to be instructed in anybody's ways, for his own were
delightfully disobedient and unexpected and entertaining.
