If the boss'll excuse me, me
mate's dead-set against a woman doing things for him.
If you wouldn't
mind not coming. He'd rather have me. Me and him's been mates this
seven years. The boss 'll understand."
The boss did understand, and rode across to the Warlochs alone, to find a
man as shy and reticent as a bushman can be, and full of dread lest the
woman at the homestead would insist on visiting him. "You see, that's
why he wouldn't come on," the mate said. "He couldn't bear the thought of
a woman doing things for him "; and the Maluka explained that the missus
understood all that. That lesson had been easily learned; for again and
again men had come in "down with a touch of fever," whose temperatures
went up at the very thought of a woman doing things for them, and always
the actual nursing was left to the Maluka or the Dandy, the woman seeing
to egg-flips and such things, exchanging at first perhaps only an
occasional greeting, and listening at times to strange life-histories
later on.
But in vain the Maluka explained and entreated: the sick man was "all
right where he was." His mate was worth "ten women fussing round," he
insisted, ignoring the Maluka's explanations. "Had he not lugged him
through the worst pinch already?" and then he played his trump card:
"He'll stick to me till I peg out," he said - "nothing's too tough for
him"; and as he lay back, the mate deciding "arguing'll only do for
him," dismissed the Maluka with many thanks, refusing all offers of
nursing help with a quiet "He'd rather have me," but accepting gratefully
broths and milk and anything of that sort the homestead could furnish.
"Nothing ever knocks me out," he reiterated, and dragged on through
sleepless days and nights, as the days dragged by finding ample reward in
the knowledge that "he'd rather have me", and when there came that deep
word of praise from his stricken comrade:
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