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.
There was a roly-poly pudding to make for Dan, baked custard for the
Dandy, jam-tarts for Happy Dick, cake and biscuits for all comers, in
addition to a dinner and supper waiting to be cooked for fifteen black
boys, several lubras, and half-a-dozen hungry white folk. Cheon had his
own peculiar form of welcome for his many favourites, regaling each one
of them with delicacies to their particular liking, each and every time
they came in.
Happy Dick, also, had his own peculiar form of welcome. "Good-day! Real
glad to see you!" was his usual greeting. Sure of his own welcome
wherever he went, he never waited to hear it, but hastened to welcome all
men into his fellowship. "Real glad to see you," he would say, with a
ready smile of comradeship; and it always seemed as though he had added:
"I hope you'll make yourself at home while with me." In some mysterious
way, Happy Dick was at all times the host giving liberally of the best he
had to his fellow-men.
He was one of the pillars of the Line Party. "Born in it, I think," he
would say. "Don't quite remember," adding with his ever-varying smile,
"Remember when it was born, anyway."
When the "Overland Telegraph" was built across the Australian continent
from sea to sea, a clear broad avenue two chains wide, was cut for it
through bush and scrub and dense forests, along the backbone of
Australia, and in this avenue the line party was "born" and bred - a party
of axemen and mechanics under the orders of a foreman, whose duty it is
to keep the "Territory section" of the line in repair, and this avenue
free from the scrub and timber that spring up unceasingly in its length.
