Traveller guests became interested.
"Haven't seen so many women together for years," one of them said.
"Reminds me of when I was a nipper," and the other traveller "reckoned"
he had struck it lucky for once. "Three on 'em at once," he chuckled
with indescribable relish. "They reckon it never rains but it pours."
And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a
homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.
But these women guests only stayed one night, the children being all
impatience to get on to the telegraph line, to those wires that talked,
and to the railway, where the iron monster ran.
Early in the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair
toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the
world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a
couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and
before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the
two hundred. Seven hundred miles on horse back in a few weeks, at one
year old, compares favourably with one of the Fizzer's trips. But it is
thus the bush develops her Fizzers.
After so much excitement Cheon feared a relapse, and was for prompt,
preventive measures; but even the Maluka felt there was a limit to the
Rest Cure, and the musterers coming in with Happy Dick's bullocks and a
great mob of mixed cattle for the yards, Dan proved a strong ally; and
besides, as the musterers were in and Happy Dick due to arrive by midday,
Cheon's hands were full with other matters.
