It was fearfully cruel. Poor old Goggle Eye suffered so dreadfully, and the only friend he had—excepting the Missus—was Tommy Dod! Nobody else would do anything for him, because they were afraid of the curse coming to them. It couldn’t touch Tommy, because he was his blood-brother, and had to do all he could to help.
Old Jimmy and Billy Muck said they would like to help, but that if they made Goggle Eye’s fire for him, their own would never burn again. Nobody could even carry his food to him. To make matters worse, Tommy Dod had to go “bush” on some private business—perhaps he was singing some of his own enemies dead—and then I had to do everything myself.
Day after day I took his food to him, and made his fire, but I soon saw that it was too late. He ate anything that I brought him, and ordered me about generally, and growled at me for not putting enough sugar in his tea— he didn’t want sugar in his tea, what he preferred was a little tea in his sugar!
Sometimes a glimpse of the merry old rogue would peep out from the gaunt old skeleton. One day I was on my hands and knees at his fire, blowing hard at it.
“My word, Missus,” he laughed merrily, “you close up blow him all away,” and he showed me the proper way to blow, and chuckled to himself at my clumsy attempts; for a blackfellow can make a fire better than any one else.
It sounds very grand being a Lady-in-waiting to a King, but it really was very smelly and disagreeable. His humpy was in fact only a sheet of bark leaning against a fallen tree, and I had to crawl about on my hands and knees, and everything was dreadfully close and stuffy. But I had plenty of Eue de Cologne, and used it freely. One day when Bett-Bett smelt it, as I was sprinkling it over my dress, she screwed up her little black nose, and after half-a-dozen very audible sniffs, said—
“My word, Missus! That one goodfellow stink all right!”
I said I was glad she liked it, and as Goggle Eye also remarked on it, I always used plenty of this “good-fellow stink” before I visited him.