Fate, However, Interfered To Keep The Missus At The Homestead, To
Persuade Cheon That, After All, The Maluka Was A
Fit and proper person to
have the care of a woman, and to find a very present use for the
House;
an influenza sore-throat breaking out in the camp, the missus developed
it, and Dan went out alone to find the Quiet Stockman and the "killers"
for Happy Dick.
CHAPTER XV
Before a week was out the Maluka and Cheon had won each other's undying
regard because of their treatment of the missus.
With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held
there by hospital routine, the Maluka decided on bed and feeding-up as
the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.
As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Maluka was
supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of
sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall.
Rice-water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and
every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the
Maluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being
administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes straightened.
(The mattress being still on the ends of cows' tails, a folded rug served
in its place). There was very little wrong with the patient, but the
wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of
rest.
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