Mr. Lawson quieted the poor screaming woman, and, when he found that little Maggie was really lost, he had horses run up, and every man and boy about the station started in search of Mrs. Jones’s lost lamb.
Little Maggie was a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, laughing, lisping little pet; but if she had been a crosspatch everybody would have looked for her just as carefully. Harry and Donald bounced out of the weather-board cottage that was used for a school-room, like pellets from a popgun, when they heard the news; and after them the tutor rushed to horse, though he wasn’t much of a rider. John Jones was fetched up from the paddock where he was ploughing, and when he heard that little Maggie was lost, he made a rush at a young horse that had only had the tacklings on once or twice, and would have got on it too, somehow, though he had been thrown over its head the next second, if the horsebreaker had not laid hold of him, and given him a leg up on to a horse fitter for his riding.
In the course of the day the news spread to the stations round about, and before nightfall the whole countryside was up hunting for poor little Maggie. The shepherds left their dogs to look after their flocks, if they had dogs, and their flocks to look after themselves if they hadn’t dogs, to scour the bush.
Mrs. Lawson and her girls searched all round the head station as if they were looking for a pin. Even Miss Smith mastered her dread of the bush, and went quite a quarter of a mile away from the house, all by herself, as she afterwards related proudly, even into places where she couldn’t see the house, and where she was dreadfully afraid that a bushranger would carry her off, or a snake would bite her, or the little imported bull would run at his timorous countrywoman. As for poor Mrs. Jones, she kept on rushing out into the bush, determined to walk on until she dropped, and then rushing back, before she had walked a mile, to hear whether little Maggie, or any tidings of little Maggie, had been brought home.
Some of those who had been hunting for the little girl gave up the hunt at the end of the first day; some went on hunting with fire-sticks during the night, and then went back to their work next morning very cross because nothing had come of their kindness, and also because—pity often makes people cross—they couldn’t help thinking of the poor father and mother, and of how they would feel if their little ones had “gone a-missing.” Others camped out when the sun had gone down on one day’s unsuccessful search, that they might be fresh to renew their search on the morrow. Harry and Donald were two of these. They had thoroughly fagged themselves out, poking here and poking there, and then riding, as if for a wager, to some place where one or other of them had fancied they might, perhaps, find some traces of poor little Maggie. They were too tired even to be hungry when they got off their horses, as the stars were coming out. They almost fell asleep as they took the saddles off their horses, and were soon snoring between the saddle-flaps they used for pillows.
When the boys woke next morning they were as hungry as fox-hunters, but what were they to do for a breakfast? Donald saw a grass tree, and remembered what he had seen the black fellows do with grass trees on his father’s station, which was farther up the country than Wonga-Wonga.
“It looks as if it would come up easy,” said Donald; “let’s loosen the earth round it a bit though. Now then, Harry, lay hold, and pull with a will, as old Tom the sailor says.”
The two boys laid hold of the queer crooked stump, and pulled with such a will that presently flat they tumbled on their backs, with the grass tree between them. The root was rotten, and swarmed with fat grubs. They made a black fellow’s breakfast off these, and then they saddled their horses, and off they rode again.
They had not gone far before they came upon King Dick-a-Dick, admiring himself at a water-hole. He was in full dress, and he seemed very proud of it, as he made a looking-glass of the water, and then tossed up his head again. His Majesty’s crown was a battered white hat, and he wore a pair of light-striped knee-breeches—that was all his dress. He had had the hat and the breeches given him at some of the stations near, and the settlers about there had given him a brass chain too, and a brass plate engraved—
“H.M. Dick-a-Dick,