They acted on Cheon like a red rag on a bull.  Flinging them from him, he sent them spinning across the stony ground with two furious kicks, following them up with further furious kicks as we looked on in speechless amazement.  “What’s ’er matter?” he growled, as, abandoning the chase with a final lunge, he stalked indignantly back to us; and as the unfortunate cabbages turned over and lay still on their tattered backs, he began to explain his wrath.  Was he not paid to grow cabbages, he asked, and where had he failed that we should accept cabbages from neighbours?  Cabbages for ourselves, but insults for him!  Then, the comical side of his nature coming to the surface as unexpectedly as his wrath, he was overcome with laughter, and clung to a verandah post for support, while still speechless, we looked on in consternation, for laughing was a serious matter with Cheon.

“My word, me plenty cross fellow,” he gasped at intervals and finally led the way to the vegetable garden, where he cut an enormous cabbage and carried it to the store to weigh it.  The scale turned at twelve pounds, and, sure of our ground now, we compared its mighty heart to the stout heart of Cheon—­a compliment fully appreciated by his Chinese mind; then, having disparaged the tattered results to his satisfaction, we went to the house and wrote a letter of thanks to our neighbour, giving him so vivid a word-picture of the reception of his cabbages that he felt inspired to play a practical joke on Cheon later on.  One thing is very certain—­everyone enjoyed those cabbages including even Cheon and the goats.

Of course we had cabbage for dinner that day, and the day following, and the next day again, and were just fearing that cabbage was becoming a confirmed habit when Dan coming in with reports we all went bush again, and the spell was broken.  “A pity the man from Beyanst wasn’t about,” Dan said when he heard of the daily menu.

It was late in September when Dan came in, and four weeks slipped away with the concerns of cattle and cattle-buyers and cattle-duffers, and as we moved hither and thither the water-melons leafed and blossomed and fruited to Billy’s delight, and Cheon’s undisguised amazement and the line party, creeping on, crept first into our borders and then into camp at the Warlochs, and Happy Dick’s visits, dog-fights, and cribbage became part of the station routine.  Now and then a traveller from “inside” passed out, but as the roads “inside” were rapidly closing in, none came from the Outside going in, and because of that there were no extra mails, and towards the end of October we were wondering how we were “going to get through the days until the Fizzer was due again,” when Dan and Jack came in unexpectedly for a consultation.

“Run clean out of flour,” Dan announced, with a wink and a mysterious look towards the black world, as he dismounted at the head of the homestead thoroughfare then, after inquiring for the “education of the missus” he added, with further winks and mystery, that it only needed a nigger hunt to round off her education properly but it was after supper before he found a fitting opportunity to explain his winks and mystery.  Then, joining us as we lounged in the open starry space between the billabong and the house, he chuckled:  “Yes, it just needs a nigger hunt to make her education a credit to us.”