“Me knock up longa Shimy Shirts,” Bett-Bett said with a grin, meaning that she was tired of wearing them.
“But where are they?” I said.
“Longa string,” she answered cheerfully. “Me bin make em.”
Then I knew that the piles of rag she had unravelled to make into string were her new “Shimy Shirts.”
I was really angry with her now, and set her to sew at a new one. She obeyed with such a cheerful grin that I began to feel quite mean for punishing her, for how could she understand that it was wrong to tear up her own things?
I was just going to tell her to run and play, when I heard a merry little chuckle from under the verandah. Looking to see what the fun was, I found that Bett-Bett was having a tick-hunt. She had just found an extra big one between Sue’s toes, which she dragged from its hiding-place and threaded on to her needle and cotton. As she held her thread up for me to admire, I saw that she had about a dozen of the horrid creatures, hanging down like a string of beads. I felt quite sick.
“Bett-Bett,” I said, “you have done enough sewing; take some soap, and go and give yourself and Sue a good bath.”
Off they went to the creek like a pair of gay young wallabies, hopping and skipping over everything.
In a few minutes they were both nearly white with soap lather, dancing a wild sort of corrobboree on an old tree trunk. The dance ended suddenly with a leap into “middle water,” as Bett-Bett called the deep holes.
They loved a bath, these two—“bogey,” the blacks call it—but neither of them would have soap on their faces.