" The Territory is hardly an
earthly paradise just before the showers. Still, Cheon did all he could
to make things pleasanter, regaling all daily on hop-beer, and all who
came in were sure of a welcome from him--Dan invariably inspiring him
with that ever fresh little joke of his when announcing afternoon tea to
the quarters. "Cognac!" he would call, and also invariably, Dan made a
great show of expectant haste, and a corresponding show of
disappointment, when the teapot only was forthcoming.
But Cheon's little joke and the afternoon tea were only interludes in the
heat and thirst and dust. Daily things hummed faster and faster, and the
South-east Trades skirmished and fought with the North-west monsoon,
until the Willy-Willys, towering higher and higher sped across the plain
incessantly, and whirled, and spun and danced like storm witches, in, and
out and about the homestead enclosure, leaving its acres all dust, and
only dust, with the house, lightly festooned in creepers now, and set in
its deep-green luxuriant garden of melons, as a pleasant oasis in a
desert of glare and dust.
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