The Maluka was half-buried in books. "Um," he murmured absently, and
that clinched the matter for all time. "Boss bin talk silly fellow" Cheon
said, with an approving nod toward the Maluka, and advised packing the
candlestick away again. "Plenty room sit down longa box," he said,
truthfully enough, putting it into an enormous empty trunk and closing
the lid, leaving the candlestick a piece of lonely splendour hidden under
a bushel.
But the full glory of our possessions was now to burst upon Cheon. The
trunk we were at was half filled with all sorts of cunning devices for
kitchen use, intended for the mistress's pantry of that commodious
station home of past ignorant imagination. A mistress's pantry forsooth,
in a land where houses are superfluous and luxuries barred, and at a
homestead where the mistress had long ceased to be anything but the
little missus - something to rule or educate or take care of, according to
the nature of her subordinates.
In a flash I knew all I had once been, and quailing before the awful
proof before me, presented Cheon with the whole collection of tin and
enamel ware, and packed him off to the kitchen before the Maluka had time
to lose interest in the books.
Everything was exactly what Cheon most needed, and he accepted everything
with gleeful chuckles - everything excepting a kerosene Primus burner for
boiling a kettle. That he refused to touch. "Him go bang," he explained,
as usual explicit and picturesque in his English.
After gathering his treasure together he waddled away to the kitchen, and
at afternoon tea we had sponge cakes, light and airy beyond all dreams of
airy lightness, no one having yet combined the efforts of Cheon, a flour
dredge, and an egg-beater, in his dreams. And Cheon's heart being as
light as his cookery, in his glee he made a little joke at the expense of
the Quarters, summoning all there to afternoon tea with a chuckling call
of "Cognac!" chuckles that increased tenfold at the mock haste of the
Quarters. A little joke, by the way, that never lost in freshness as the
months went by.
At intervals during the days that followed Cheon surveyed his treasures,
and during these intervals the whirr of the flour dredge or egg-beater
was heard from the kitchens, and invariably the whirr was followed by a
low, distinct chuckle of appreciation.
All afternoon we worked, and by the evening the dining-room was
transformed: blue cloths and lace runners on the deal side-table and
improvised pigeon-holes; nicknacks here and there on tables and shelves
and brackets; pictures on the walls; "kent" faces in photograph frames
among the nicknacks; a folding carpet-seated armchair in a position of
honour; cretonne curtains in the doorway between the rooms, and inside
the shimmering white net a study in colour effect - blue and white matting
on the floor, a crimson cloth on the table, and on the cloth Cheon's
"silver" swan sailing in a sea of purple, blue, and heliotrope
water-lilies.
