"I do."
"And mean it, if you please."
"I mean it," said Basil, with his hand on his heart, and a merry twinkle in his eyes.
"Very good. You see the hole. Who cut it?"
"On my word of honour, Annette, I haven't the slightest idea."
"It was cut by the blacks. Now, what did they cut it for?"
"How on earth should I know?"
"You ought to know. You have been brought up in a very bad school. I'll show you what for. Out with your knife, Basil. Dig it in here, a long way under the hole. That is right. Now you can have a good drink of cold sweet water. Is it not wonderful?"
"Indeed it is. Like Oliver Twist, I ask for more."
The conversation instantly took another turn. There were but few books on the home station, and among them no work of fiction. It fell to Basil's lot to open a new fairyland in the young girl's life. "What was Oliver Twist?" "He was not a 'what'; he was a 'who.'" "Then who was Oliver Twist?" Basil told the story as well as he could, and afterwards told another; and after the second tale, still another, this time a more simple one, from the magic cupboard of Hans Christian Andersen. It was long before they resumed their woodland lessons. Annette pointed out where the best figs and almonds grew, instructed him how to make bracelets and necklaces out of the stones of the quandong fruit, and where the sugar bags of the native bees were to be found. They caught a native bear, not a very ferocious creature and tamed it in a few days so thoroughly that it followed them about like a dog, to the disgust of Bruno, who did not approve of the proceeding; they gathered wild ginger and wild nutmegs in the scrub, and in a famous creek they caught quantities of golden perch, with red eyes and double chins; and once they saw two emus in the distance, and heard the faint sound of their peculiar whistle. In such-like idling the days flew by, and the hours were all too short, but suddenly it dawned upon Basil that this lotus life could not last for ever. It was from a sense of duty, and with a sinking heart (for the thought of parting from these good friends, especially from Annette, sorely oppressed him) that he intimated to Anthony Bidaud that he had lingered too long, and must go farther afield.