The next day she said that “gammon piccaninnies” were “silly fellow.”
The day after that, Sue and the station pups had a tug-of-war with it, and the last we saw of it was when Sue was “going bush” with it in her mouth, and the pups in full chase after her.
Bett-Bett took no notice of the fate of her “gammon piccaninny.” She had found something much more interesting—a nest of little kittens under the raised floor of the bath-room—and for several days we saw very little of her, except the soles of her feet, as they stuck out from under the bath-room floor.
When the kittens were big enough, I sent Billy Muck with one of them to my next-door neighbour. With a bottle of milk and a saucer under one arm, and the kitten under the other, he started for his hundred-mile walk as cheerfully as though he were just going round the corner, and in two days reached the Katherine, his journey’s end.
On his return I asked him why he had hurried so.
“Milk close up finissem,” was all he said.
Good kind old Billy Muck! He wouldn’t let even a kitten suffer from hunger or thirst, if he could help it.