After wandering through several trunks and gloating over blouses, and skirts, and house-linen, and old friends the books were opened up, and before the Maluka became lost to the world Cheon favoured them with a passing glance.  “Big mob book,” he said indifferently, and turned his attention to the last trunk of all.

Near the top was a silver filigree candlestick moulded into the form of a Convolvulus flower and leaf—­a dainty little thing, but it appeared ridiculous to Cheon’s commonsense mind.

“Him silly fellow,” he scoffed, and appealed to the Maluka for his opinion:  “him silly fellow?  Eh boss?” he asked.

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.