Jack sent quickly for Lennie to come and work with him. For Lennie, with a wife and a child, was struggling vary hard.
Lea and Tom both came. Jack had not expected Tom. But Tom lifted his brown eyes to Jack and said:
"I sortta felt I couldn't stand even Len being mates with you, an' me not there. I was your first mate. Jack. I've never been myself since I parted with you."
"All right," laughed Jack. "You're my first mate."
"That's what I am. General," said Tom.
Jack had showed Monica some of the ore, and told her the mine seemed to be turning out fairly. She was getting back her own strength, that those two monstrous young twins had almost robbed from her entirely. Jack was very careful of her. He wanted above all things that she should become really strong again.
And she, with her rare vitality, soon began to bloom once more. And as her strength came back she was very much taken up with her babies. These were the first she had enjoyed. The other two she had never really enjoyed. But with these she was as fussy as a young cat with her kittens. She almost forgot Jack entirely. Left him to be busy with Tom and Lennie and his mine. Even the gold failed to excite her.
And she had rather a triumph. She was able to be queenly again with Tom and Lennie. As a girl, she had always been a bit queenly with the rest of them at Wandoo. And she couldn't bear to be humiliated in their eyes.
Now she needn't. She had the General for her husband, she had his twins. And he had gold in his mine. Hadn't she a perfect right to be queenly with Tom and Lennie? She even got into the habit, right at the beginning, of speaking of Jack as "the General" to them.
"Where's the General? Didn't he come down with you?" she would snap at them, in her old sparky fashion.