“How are you on tools?” queried Wally.
“Using tools? Pretty fair,” admitted Bob. “I took up carpentering at school; it was always a bit of a hobby of mine. I'm no cabinet-maker, if that's what you mean.”
“You don't need to be,” Wally answered. “Up where I come from—we were pretty far back in Queensland—we hardly ever saw real furniture, the stuff you buy in shops. It was all made out of packing-cases and odd bits of wood. Jolly decent, too; you paint 'em up to match the rooms, or stain 'em dark colours, and the girls put sort of petticoats round some of the things.”
“We began that way,” said David Linton, with a half-sigh. “There was surprisingly little proper furniture in our first house, and we were very comfortable.”
“Couldn't we begin, sir?” asked Wally eagerly. “This wet weather looks like setting in. Bob can't do much on the farm. If we could get out a few odd lengths of timber and some old packing cases from the township—”
“Heavens, you don't need to do that!” exclaimed their host. “The place is full of both; packing-cases have been arriving at Billabong since Jim was a baby, and very few of them have gone away again. There's plenty of timber knocking about, too. We'll go over to the farm if you like, Bob, and plan out measurements.”
“I think it's a splendid idea, thanks, sir,” said Bob slowly. “Only I don't quite see why I should bother you—”
“Oh, don't talk rubbish!” said David Linton, getting up. “I believe I'm glad of the job—the place seems queer without Jim and Norah.”
“My word!” said Wally. “Let's all turn carpenters, and give Tommy the surprise of her life!”
They flung themselves at the work with energy. A visit to the new house, and a careful study of each room, revealed unsuspected possibilities to Bob, whose English brain, “brought up,” as Wally said, “on a stodgy diet of bedroom suites,” had failed to grasp what might be done by handy people with a soul above mere fashion in the matter of furniture. They came back with a notebook bulging with measurements and heads seething with ideas. First, they dealt with the bedrooms, and made for each a set of long shelves and a dressing-table-cupboard—the latter a noble piece of furniture, which was merely a packing-case, smoothed, planed and fitted with shelves; the whole to be completed with a seemly petticoat when Tommy should be able to detach her mind from influenza patients. They made her, too, a little work-table, which was simply a wide, low shelf, at which she could write or sew—planned to catch a good light from her window, so that as she sat near it, she could see the line of willows that marked the creek and the rolling plains that ended in the ranges behind Billabong. Tommy's room was painted in pale green; and when they had stained all these exciting additions dark green, Bob heaved a great sigh, and yearned audibly for the swift recovery of the influenza patients, so that Tommy could return and behold her new possessions.