At this everybody shouted with laughter. At last they understood the Missus and her anger.
“Me no more bin talk kill him deadfellow,” they screamed. “Me bin talk kill him longa quart pot.”
So they had. I remembered now, and as usual it was my fault. Nobody but the Missus ever seemed to do anything wrong. I should have understood their funny “pidgin English” better. To “kill” only means to hit, or prick, or thump; but to put some one actually to death is to “kill deadfellow.” Only that morning Bett-Bett had said, when her needle pricked her finger, “My word, Missus! neenel bin kill finger belonga me.”
I called Bett-Bett, and asked her what she had been doing.
She said that when she got to the garden, she had found Rolly using her favourite quart pot to sprinkle water with. She had asked for it, but Rolly would not give it up, so she had hammered her with another to make her. “Me bin long time kill him,” she said, but as Rolly wouldn’t give in, Biddy and Rosey had run for me to stop the quarrel. Of course, when they saw me coming Rolly had dropped the quart pot and Bett-Bett had stopped “killing” her, and they had both gone on with the watering.
That was all. Such a fuss about nothing! I took the leaky old quart pot from them, and sending them all back to their work, sat down under the banana clump.
In five minutes they were shouting merrily and playing practical jokes on one another; for with a blackfellow, as soon as a quarrel is over, it is forgotten.
Watering the garden is something like washing-day —plenty of fun and water, and very few clothes.
The fun began when Rosey went to fill her bucket. Judy and Biddy caught her by the heels and sent her flying into the billabong. As she scrambled out they ‘showered’ her from full buckets and quart pots, and then ran screaming and spluttering up the banks. Rosey waited her chance, and soon sent Biddy headlong into the pumpkin bed, with a bucket of water after her. Judy screamed with delight at this, only to get a full quart of water into her gaping, shouting mouth. Bett-Bett had thrown it, but in her hurry to dodge the watermelon that Judy flung back at her, tripped and sat down in her own bucket of water, and Rolly got the watermelon in the middle of her back. It broke into a dozen pieces, and of course that meant a wild scramble for the red, juicy fruit, and then everybody sat down to enjoy it properly, and flipped the pips into each other’s faces.
They played these pranks every night, and kept the water flying in all directions; but as it always ended by falling somewhere among the vegetables, the garden was a great success, for it was always well watered. As I said before, a blackfellow sees no sense in working when play will do as well. As I sat watching them, and expecting a shower-bath every minute or two, Jimmy came along, whittling a bit of stick.