When the rinsing was finished, and the clothes were “cooking,” as we called boiling, the lubras put on their dresses and came and sat down near me. They knew well enough that I should have something good for them to eat. Canned fruit or sweet biscuit were always voted “goodfellow,” but there was nothing so good as treacle—“blackfellow sugarbag,” you know.
It was treacle to-day, and as every one lay laughing, smoking and resting, the tin was passed round and round. Very thin, bony, black fingers went in, and very fat, juicy black fingers came out, and were put into grinning, happy mouths, Sue getting a lick from Bett-Bett’s, every turn.
“Do you like washing-days, Bett-Bett?” I asked, as she sat waiting for another dig into the tucker.
“My word!” she grinned, dragging a crawling piccaninny from the treacle-tins by its legs.
Biddy interfered at once, by putting the baby’s little fist into the sticky stuff. It was her piccaninny, you see, and engaged to be married to Goggle Eye!
“Biddy,” I said, as she bent forward to push the baby’s treacly fingers into its open mouth, “haven’t you cut your hair rather short?” I had noticed the day before how pretty and curly it was, but now it was like a convict’s.
“Goggle Eye bin talk,” she answered, meaning that he had told her to cut it. That was all she said, for she knew I would understand, you see; she was Goggle Eye’s mother-in-law, and so all her hair or most of it belonged to him. Whenever it grew nice and long, he told her to cut it off and make him some string, and she had to obey. It was a bit of a nuisance being a mother-in-law.
I’m sure Billy Muck often wished that I was his mother-in-law, for he saw me drying my hair in the sun one day, and knew it was nice and long.