Just as he had finished the girl cried: "The water is actually boiling? Who would have believed it possible?"
"Now we are going to have billy tea as they make it in the bush in Australia," said Dermot, opening the canister and dropping tea from it into the boiling water.
Noreen gathered up a pile of well-toasted chupatis and turned a smiling, dimpled face to him.
"This is the jolliest picnic I've ever had," she cried. "It was worth being carried off by those wretches to have all these delightful surprises. Now, tea is ready, sir. Please may I pour it out?"
He wrapped his handkerchief round the pot before handing it to her.
"I suppose you haven't a dairy in your wonderful jungle?" she asked, laughing.
"No; I'm sorry to say that you must put up with condensed milk," he replied, producing a tin from a pocket of the pad and opening it with his knife.
"What a pity! That spoils the illusion," declared the girl. "I ought to refuse it; but I'll pass it for this occasion, as I don't like my tea unsugared and milkless. No, I refuse to have a spoon." For he took out a couple and some aluminium plates from the inexhaustible pad. "I'll stir my tea with a splinter of bamboo and eat my chupatis off leaves. It is more in keeping with the situation."
Like a couple of light-hearted children they sat side by side on the pad, drank their tea from the rude bamboo cups and devoured the hot chupatis with enjoyment; while, invisible in the dense undergrowth, Badshah twenty yards away betrayed his presence by tearing down creepers and breaking off branches. In due time Dermot took from the hot ashes a hardened clay ball, broke it open and served up the jungle fowl, from which the feathers had been stripped off by the process of cooking. Noreen expressed herself disappointed when her companion produced knives and forks from the magic pockets of the pad.
"We ought to be consistent and use our fingers," she said.