Fortunately The Chairs Were All "Up" To The Weight Of The Ladies, And The Remainder Of The Company Easily Accommodated

Itself to circumstances, in the shape of sawn stumps, rough stools, and sundry boxes; and although the company was large

And the dining-table small, and although, at times, we feared the table was about to fulfil its oft-repeated threat and fall over, yet the dinner was there to be enjoyed, and, being bush-folk, and hungry, our guests enjoyed it, passing over all incongruities with simple merriment - a light-hearted, bubbling merriment, in no way comparable to that "laughter of fools," that crackling of thorns under a pot, provoked by the incongruities of the world's freak dinners. The one is the heritage of the simple-hearted, and the other - all the world has to give in exchange for this birthright.

The elder lads, one fourteen and one ten years of age, found Cheon by far the most entertaining incongruity at the dinner, and when dinner was over - after we had settled down on the various chairs and stumps that had been carried out to the verandah again - they shadowed him wherever he went.

They were strangely self-possessed children; but knowing little more of the world than the black children their playmates, Cheon, in his turn, found them vastly amusing, and instructing them in the ways of the world - from his point of view - found them also eager pupils.

But their education came to a standstill after they had mastered the mysteries of the Dandy's gramophone, and Cheon was no longer entertaining.

All afternoon brass-band selections, comic songs, and variety items, blared out with ceaseless reiteration; and as the men-folk smoked and talked cattle, and the wee baby - a bonnie fair child - toddled about, smiling and contented, the women-folk spoke of their life "out-back," and listening, I knew that neither I nor the telegraph lady had even guessed what roughness means.

For fifteen years things had been improving, and now everyone was to have a well-earned holiday. The children were to be christened and then shown the delights of a large town! Darwin of necessity (Palmerston, by the way, on the map, but Darwin to Territorians). Darwin with its one train, its telegraph offices, two or three stores, banks and public buildings, its Residency, its Chinatown, its lovers' walk, its two or three empty, wide, grass-grown streets bordered with deep-verandahed, iron-built bungalow-houses, with their gardens planted in painted tins - a development of the white-ant pest - and lastly, its great sea, where ships wander without tracks or made ways! Hardly a typical town, but the best in the Territory.

The women, naturally, were looking forward to doing a bit of shopping, and as we slipped into fashions the 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.

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