"You were on your way to see me, eh?"
"I was on my way to Dandong."
"Wanting work? Well, you shall have it," said Deverell, with decision. "I don't want hands, but I'll take you on; you've saved my life, my good fellow, or you're going to, in a brace of shakes. How goes the damper?"
"Well," said the old man, answering Deverell's last question shortly, but ignoring his first altogether. "Shall I sweeten the tea or not?"
"Sweeten it."
The old man got ready a handful of tea and another of sugar to throw into the quart-pot the moment the water boiled. He had not yet turned round. Still kneeling, with the soles of his boots under Deverell's nose, he moved the damper from time to time, and made the tea. His hands shook.
Deverell made himself remarkably happy during the next half-hour. He ate the hot damper, he drank the strong tea, in a way that indicated unbounded confidence in his digestive powers. A dyspeptic must have wept for envy. Towards the end of the meal he discovered that the swagman—who sat remote from the fire, and seemed to be regarding Deverell with a gaze of peculiar fascination—had scarcely broken his bread.
"Aren't you hungry?" asked Deverell, with his mouth full.
"No."
But Deverell was, and that, after all, was the main thing. If the old man had no appetite, there was no earthly reason for him to eat; his abstinence could not hurt him under the circumstances, and naturally it did not worry Deverell. If, on the other hand, the old man preferred to feed off Deverell—with his eyes—why, there is no accounting for preferences, and that did not worry Deverell either. Indeed, by the time his pipe was once more in blast, he felt most kindly disposed towards this taciturn tramp. He would give him a billet. He would take him on as a rabbiter, and rig him out with a tent, camp fixings, traps, and even—perhaps—a dog or two. He would thus repay in princely fashion to-night's good turn—but now, confound the thing! He had been sitting the whole evening on the old fool's blankets, and the old fool had been sitting on the ground!