About next midday we rode into the homestead thoroughfare, where Cheon and Tiddle’ums welcomed us with enthusiasm, but Cheon’s enthusiasm turned to indignation when he found we were only in for a day or two.
“What’s ’er matter?” he ejaculated. “Missus no more stockrider”; but a letter waiting for us at the homestead made “bush” more than ever imperative: a letter, from the foreman of the telegraphic repairing line party, asking for a mob of killers, and fixing a date for its delivery to one “Happy Dick.”
“Spoke just in the nick of time,” Dan said; but as we discussed plans Cheon hinted darkly that the Măluka was not a fit and proper person to be entrusted with the care of a woman, and suggested that he should undertake to treat the missus as she should be treated, while the Măluka attended to the cattle.
Fate, however, interfered to keep the missus at the homestead, to persuade Cheon that, after all, the Măluka was a fit and proper person to have the care of a woman, and to find a very present use for the house; an influenza sore-throat breaking out in the camp, the missus developed it, and Dan went out alone to find the Quiet Stockman and the “killers” for Happy Dick.
Chapter 15
Before a week was out the Măluka and Cheon had won each other’s undying regard because of their treatment of the missus.
With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held there by hospital routine, the Măluka decided on bed and feeding-up as the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.
As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Măluka was supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall. Rice-water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the Măluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes straightened. (The mattress being still on the ends of cows’ tails, a folded rug served in its place). There was very little wrong with the patient, but the wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of rest.
I pleaded with the Măluka, but the Măluka pleading for just a little more rest and feeding-up, while Cheon gulped and choked in the background, I gave in, and eating everything as it was offered, snatched what rest I could, getting as much entertainment as possible out of Cheon and the staff in between times.
For three days I lay obediently patient, and each day Cheon grew more affectionate, patting my hands at times, as he confided to the Măluka that although he admired big, moon-faced women as a feast for the eyes, he liked them small and docile when he had to deal personally with them. Until I met Cheon I thought the Chinese incapable of affection; but many lessons are learned out bush.