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.
