Cheon greeted us with his usual enthusiasm, and handed the Maluka a
letter containing a request for a small mob of bullocks within three
weeks.
"Nothing like keeping the ball rolling,", Dan said, also waxing
enthusiastic, while the South-folk remained convinced that life out-bush
is stagnation.
CHAPTER XIX
Dan and the Quiet Stockman went out to the north-west immediately, to
"clean up there" before getting the bullocks together; but the Maluka,
settling down to arrears of bookkeeping, with the Dandy at his right
hand, Cheon once more took the missus under his wing feeding her up and
scorning her gardening efforts.
"The idea of a white woman thinking she could grow water-melons," he
scoffed, when I planted seeds, having decided on a carpet of luxuriant
green to fill up the garden beds until the shrubs grew. The Maluka
advised "waiting," and the seeds coming up within a few days, Cheon,
after expressing surprise, prophesied an early death or a fruitless life.
Billy Muck, however, took a practical interest in the water-melons, and
to incite him to water them in our absence, he was made a shareholder in
the venture. As a natural result, the Staff, the Rejected, and the
Shadows immediately applied for shares - pointing out that they too
carried water to the plants - and the water-melon beds became the
property of a Working Liability Company with the missus as Chairman of
Directors.
The shadows were as numerous as ever, the rejected on the increase, but
the staff was, fortunately, reduced to three for the time being; or,
rather, reduced to two, and increased again to three: Judy had been
called "bush" on business, and the Macs having got out in good time.
Bertie's Nellie and Biddie had been obliged to resign and go with the
waggons, under protest, of course, leaving Rosy and Jimmy's Nellie
augmented by one of the most persistent of all the shadows - a tiny child
lubra, Bett-Bett.
Most of us still considered Bett-Bett one of the shadows but she
persisted that she was the mainstay of the staff. "Me all day dust 'im
paper, me round 'im up goat" she would say. "Me sit down all right".
She certainly excelled in "rounding-up goat," riding the old Billy like a
race-horse; and with Rosy filling the position of housemaid to
perfection, Jimmy's Nellie proving invaluable in her vigorous treatment
of the rejected and the wood-heap gossip filling in odd times, life so
far as it was dependent on black folk - was running on oiled wheels: the
house was clean and orderly, the garden flourished; and as the melons
grew apace, throwing out secondary leaves in defiance of Cheon's
prophecies, Billy Muck grew more and more enthusiastic, and, usurping the
position of Chairman of the Directors, he inspired the shareholders with
so much zeal that the prophecies were almost fulfilled through a surfeit
of watering.
