Mates at Billabong

by Mary Grant Bruce

"But the shaving water?"

"Ah, well, I expect Fred Anderson wanted that. She's engaged to him, you know," said Norah, simply.

"Well, I hardly see why she should give me his shaving water, either from Anderson's point of view or mine; but I suppose it's all right," said Mr. Linton. "The whole place is upset. I really wanted some work done, but the men who should have been sinking a well were tacking up ferns, and those whose mission in life is—or ought to be—hoeing out ragwort were putting French chalk on the floor of my loft! Judging from my brief inspection, it seemed to me that the latter occupation was far more strenuous than the ragwort job; but they seemed much happier than usual, and were working overtime without a struggle!"

"To hear you talk so patiently," quoth Norah, "no one would imagine that you'd bought the French chalk yourself!" She perched on the arm of his chair, and looked at him severely, while the boys laughed.

"The men are like a lot of kids to-day," Jim said. "Did you hear about old Lee Wing, Dad? He was standing under the block and pulley after they'd hoisted up the piano, and I expect the sight of the hook on the end of the dangling rope was too much for the men, for they slipped it through Wing's leather belt and hauled him up too! You should have seen him, with his pigtail dangling, kicking at the end of the rope like the spider in 'Little Miss Muffet!' They landed him in the loft, and Fred Anderson insisted on waltzing with him, while one of the musicians hammered out The Merry Widow on the piano. Poor old Wing was very wild at first, but they got him laughing finally."

"Why that long-suffering Chinaman stays here is always a mystery to me," said his father, laughing. "He's the butt of the whole place; but he fattens on it."

"There's the dinner gong!" said Norah, jumping up. "Come on, gentlemen, we've to hurry to-night, so that the girls can get free early."

The loft over the stables, which had been built with a view to such occasions, was quite transformed when the house party entered it a couple of hours later. The electric light—Billabong had its own plant for lighting—had been extended to the loft, and gleamed down on a perfect bower of green—bracken and coral ferns, the tender foliage of young sapling tops, Christmas bush, clematis and tall reeds from the lagoon—the latter gathered by Jim and Wally during their morning bathe. Rough steps had been improvised to lead from outside up to the main door of the loft, over which still dangled from the block and pulley the rope that had suspended the irate Lee Wing earlier in the day. It was also possible to enter by the usual method—a trapdoor in the floor over a ladder leading from the floor below; but this was considered by the men scarcely suitable for their partners. All traces of its usual contents had, of course, been removed from the big room, and the floor gleamed in the light, mute evidence of the ardour with which Mr. Linton's French chalk had been applied. At one end, near the railing guarding the trapdoor, the Cunjee musicians were stationed, and close to them a queer old figure hovered—old Andy Ferguson, gnarled and knotted and withered; Irish, for all his Scotch name, and with his old blue eyes full of Irish fire at the thought of "a spree." He held his old fiddle tenderly as he might hold a child; it, too, was the worse for wear, and showed in more than one place traces of repair; but when Andy wielded the bow its tones were just as mellow to him as the finest instrument on earth. He kept a jealous eye on the Cunjee men; they might oust him for most of the night, but at least his was to be the old privilege of opening the ball. "The Boss" had said so.

The homestead men had lined up near the door to receive their guests—to-night they were hosts to Mr. Linton and his children, as to every one else. They were a fine lot of fellows—Murty O'Toole, and Mick Shanahan, the horse breaker, and Willis and Blake and Burton—all long and lean and hard, with deep-set, keen eyes and brown, thin faces; Evans, who was supposed to be over-seer, and important enough to arrive late; younger fellows, like Fred Anderson and David Boone (the latter's hair suspiciously smooth and shiny); Hogg, the dour old man who ruled the flower garden and every one but Norah; and a sprinkling of odd rouseabouts and boys, very sleek and well brushed, in garments of varying make, low collars, and the tie the bushman loves "for best"—pale blue satin, with what Wally termed "jiggly patterns" on it. Of the same type were the guests—men from other stations, cocky farmers and a very small sprinkling of township men.

The ladies kept rigidly on arrival to the other side of the loft. There was Mrs. Brown, resplendent in a puce silk dress that Norah remembered from her earliest childhood, with a lace cap of monumental structure topped by a coquettish bow of pale pink ribbon. Her kind old face beamed on every one. Close to her, very meek under her sheltering wing, were Sarah and Mary, the housemaids—very gay in papery silks, pink and green, with much adornment of wide yellow lace. Norah had helped to dress them both, and she smiled delightedly at them as she came in. There was Mrs. Willis, who ruled over the men's hut, and was reckoned, as a cook, only inferior to Mrs. Brown; and Joe Burton's pretty wife, in a simple white muslin—with no doubt in big Joe's heart, as he looked at her, as to who was the belle of the ball. Then, girls and women from that vague region the bush calls "about," in mixed attire—from flannel blouses and serge skirts, to a lady who hurt the eye it looked at, and made the lights seem pale, in her gorgeous gown of mustard-coloured velveteen, trimmed with knots of cherry-coloured ribbon. They came early, with every intention of staying late, and cheerfully certain of a good time. The Billabong ball was an event for which an invitation was much coveted.