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.  “Three on ’em at once,” he chuckled with indescribable relish.  “They reckon it never rains but it pours.”  And so it would seem with three women guests within three weeks at a homestead where women had been almost unknown for years.

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.