“Me new cook!” he repeated, going on from where he had left off. “Me Cheon!” and then, in queer pidgin-English, he solemnly rolled out a few of his many qualifications:
“Me savey all about,” he chanted. “Me savey cook ’im, and gard’in’, and milk ’im, and chuckie, and fishin’ and shootin’ wild duck.” On and on he chanted through a varied list of accomplishments, ending up with an application for the position of cook. “Me sit down? Eh boss?” he asked, moon-faced and serious.
“Please yourself!” the Măluka laughed, and with a flash of white teeth and an infectious chuckle Cheon laughed and nodded back; then, still chuckling, he waddled away to the kitchen and took possession there, while we went to our respective dinners, little guessing that the truest-hearted, most faithful, most loyal old “josser” had waddled into our lives.
Chapter 11
Cheon rose at cock-crow (“fowl-sing-out,” he preferred to call it), and began his duties by scornfully refusing Sam’s bland offer of instruction in the “ways of the homestead.”
“Me savey all about,” he said, with a majestic wave of his hands, after expressing supreme contempt for Sam’s caste and ways; so Sam applied for his cheque, shook hands all round, and withdrew smilingly.
Sam’s account being satisfactorily “squared,” Cheon’s name was then formally entered in the station books as cook and gardener, at twenty-five shillings a week. That was the only vacancy he ever filled in the books; but in our life at the homestead he filled almost every vacancy that required filling, and there were many.
There was nothing he could not and did not do for our good, and it was well that he refused to be instructed in anybody’s ways, for his own were delightfully disobedient and unexpected and entertaining. Not only had we “struck the jolliest old josser going,” but a born ruler and organiser into the bargain. He knew best what was good for us, and told us so, and, meekly bending to his will, our orders became mere suggestions to be entertained and carried out if approved of by Cheon, or dismissed as “silly-fellow” with a Podsnapian wave of his arm if they in no way appealed to him.
Full of wrath for Sam’s ways, and bubbling over with trundling energy, he calmly appropriated the whole staff, as well as Jimmy, Billy Muck, and the rejected, and within a week had put backbone into everything that lacked it, from the water-butts to old Jimmy.
The first two days were spent in a whirlwind of dust and rubbish, turned out from unguessed-at recesses, and Cheon’s jovial humour suiting his helpers to a nicety, the rubbish was dealt with amid shouts of delight and enjoyment; until Jimmy, losing his head in his lightness of heart, dug Cheon in the ribs, and, waving a stick over his head, yelled in mock fierceness: “Me wild-fellow, black fellow. Me myall-fellow.”