Back to Billabong Part 26

"Don't go to look at it with any large ideas of up-to-date improvements floating in your mind," Jim warned her. "It's sure to be pretty primitive, and probably there isn't even a bathroom."

"Don't you worry, Tommy; we'll build you one," said Mr. Linton.

"I'm not going to worry about anything; there are always washtubs,"

spoke Tommy cheerfully--"and thank you, all the same, Mr. Linton. I didn't expect much when I came out to Australia, but I'm getting so much more than I expected that I'm in a state of bewilderment all the time.

Someday I feel that I shall come down with a b.u.mp, and I shall be thankful if it's only over a bathroom."

"Distressing picture of the valiant pioneer looking for discomforts and failing to find them," said Bob, laughing. "It's so difficult to feel really pioneerish in a place where there are taps, and electric light, and motors, and no one appears to wear a red s.h.i.+rt, like every Australian bushman I ever saw on the stage."

"Did you bring any out with you?" demanded Norah wickedly.

"I didn't. But honest, it was only because I had so many khaki ones, and I thought they'd do. Otherwise I'd certainly have thought that scarlet s.h.i.+rts were part of the ordinary outfit for the Colonies. And if you believed all the things they tell you in outfitting shops, you would bring a gorgeous a.s.sortment. We'd have even arrived here with tinware.

It was lucky I knew some Australians--they delicately hinted that you really had a shop or two in the princ.i.p.al cities."

"I've often marvelled at the queer collection people seem to bring out,"

said Mr. Linton. "It's not so bad of late years, but ten years ago a jackeroo would arrive here with about a lorry-load of stuff, most of which he could have bought much more cheaply in Melbourne or Sydney--and he'd certainly never use the greater part of it. Apparently a London shop will sell you the same kind of outfit for a Melbourne suburb as if you were going into the wilds of West Africa. They haven't any conscience."

"They just never learn geography," said Norah. "And 'the Colonies' to them mean exactly the same thing, no matter in what continent the colony may be. If they can sell pioneers tinware to take out to Melbourne, so much the better for them. Well, I must see Brownie, or there may not be early breakfast for pioneers or any one else."

Brownie rose to the occasion--there had never been any known occasion to which Brownie did not rise--and the hospital at Cunjee was still grappling with early morning problems next day when the Billabong motor pulled up at the door, after a flying visit to the new home--which Tommy, regarding with the large eye of faith, had declared to be full of boundless possibilities. Dr. Anderson came out to meet the new-comers, Norah and Tommy, neat and workmanlike; Jim, bearing their luggage; and Mr. Linton and Bob sharing a large humper, into which Brownie had packed everything eatable she could find--and Brownie's capacity for finding things eatable at short notice was one of her most astonis.h.i.+ng traits.

The little doctor, hara.s.sed as he was, greeted them with a twinkle.

"You Lintons generally appear bearing your sheaves with you," he said.

"Well, you're very welcome. How many of you do I keep?"

"Tommy and Norah, for certain," said Mr. Linton. "And as many more of us as you please. Want us all, doctor?"

"Well, I really don't; there are a good many men volunteers. But if I might commandeer the car and a driver for a few hours, I should be glad," the doctor went on. "There are some cases to be brought in from Mardale and Clinthorpe. I heard of them only this morning, on the telephone, and I was wondering how to get them in."

"We're at your disposal, and you've only to telephone for us or the car whenever you want it," said Mr. Linton. "How are things this morning?"

"Oh--bad enough. We have several very troublesome cases; people simply won't give in soon enough. My youngsters are very ill, but I'm not really worried about them as long as my wife keeps up. Our biggest trouble is that our cook here went down this morning. She told me she couldn't sleep a wink all night, and when she woke up in the morning her tongue was sticking to the roof of her head!--and certainly she has temperature enough for any strange symptoms. But we feel rather as if the bottom had dropped out of the universe, for none of our volunteers are equal to the job."

"I can cook," said Norah and Tommy together.

"Can you?" said the little doctor, staring at them as though the heavens had opened and rained down angels on his head. "Are you sure? You don't look like it!"

"I can guarantee them," said Mr. Linton, laughing. "Only you'll have to watch Norah, for the spell of the war is heavy upon her, and she'll boil your soup bones thirteen times, and feed you all on haricot beans and lentils if n.o.body checks her!"

"Dad, you haven't any manners," said Norah severely. "May I cook, Doctor?"

"You can share the job," said Dr. Anderson thankfully. "I really think it's more than enough for one of you. This place is getting pretty full.

Of course, I've wired to town for a cook, but goodness knows if we'll get one; it's unlikely. Come on, now, and I'll introduce you to Sister."

Sister proved to be a tall, capable, quiet woman, with war decorations.

She greeted the volunteers thankfully, and unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced their place to be cooks, rather than nurses.

"I can get girls who will do well enough in the wards," she said, "where I can direct them. But I can't be in the kitchen too. If you two can carry on without supervision it will be a G.o.dsend."

So the kitchen swallowed up Norah and Tommy, and there they worked during the weeks that followed, while the influenza scourge raged round Victoria. The little cottage-hospital became full almost to bursting-point. Even the rooms for the staff had to be appropriated, and nurses and helpers slept in a cottage close by. Luckily for the cooks, Cunjee now boasted a gas supply and its citizens supplied them with gas-stoves, as Norah said, "in clutches," so that they worked in comfort. It was hard work, with little time to spare, but the girls had learned method, and they soon mapped out a routine that prevented their ever being rushed or flurried. And they blessed the cold weather that saved constant watching lest supplies should go bad.

From Billabong came daily hampers that greatly relieved their labours.

It was a matter of some amazement to the Lintons that Brownie did not volunteer for the hospital, and indeed, it had been the first thought of Brownie herself. But she repressed it firmly, though by no means feeling comfortable. To Murty she confided her views, and was relieved by his approval.

"I know I did ought to go," she said, almost tearfully. "There's those two blessed lambs in the kitchen, doing wot I'd ought to be doing; and I know Mrs. Archdale 'ud come up an' run things 'ere for me. But wot 'ud 'appen if I did go, I ask you, Murty? Simply they'd take the two blessed lambs out of the kitchen an' put 'em to nursing in the wards, an' next thing you knew they'd both be down with the beastly flu' themselves.

They're safer among the pots and pans, Murty. But when the master looks at me I don't feel comferable."

"Yerra, let him look," said Murty stoutly. "'Tis the great head ye have on ye; I'd never have thought of it. Don't go worryin', now. Are ye not sendin' them in the heighth of good livin' every day?"

"That's the least I can do," said Brownie, brightening a little. "Only I'd like to think Miss Norah and Miss Tommy got some of it, and not just them patients, gethered up from goodness knows where."

"Yerra, Miss Norah wouldn't want to know their addresses before she'd feed 'em," said the bewildered Murty. But there came a suspicious smell from the kitchen, as of something burning, and Mrs. Brown fled with a swiftness that was surprising, considering her circ.u.mference.

Jim lived a moving existence in those days, flying between Billabong and Cunjee in the car, bringing supplies, always on hand for a job if wanted, and insisting that on their daily "time off" Norah and Tommy should come out for a spin into the country. Sometimes they managed to take Sister, too, or some of the other helpers. The car never went out with any empty seats. Presently they were recovering patients to be given fresh air or taken home; white-faced mothers, longing to be back to the house and children left in the care of "dad," and whatever kindly neighbours might drop in; or "dads" themselves, much bewildered at the amazing illness that had left them feeling as if neither their legs nor their heads belonged to them. Occasionally, after dropping one of these convalescents, Jim would find jobs waiting to his hand about the bush homestead; cows to milk, a fence to be mended, wood waiting to be chopped. He used to do them vigorously, while in the house "mum" fussed over her restored man and tried to keep him from going out to run the farm immediately. There were generally two or three astonished children to show him where tools were kept--milk buckets, being always up-ended on a fence post, needed no introduction, and the pump, for a sluice afterwards, was not hard of discovery. The big Rolls-Royce used to purr gently away through the bush paddock afterwards, often with a bewildered "mum" looking amazedly at the tall young man who drove it.

Meanwhile Bob Rainham, left alone with his host, set about the business of his new farm in earnest, since there seemed nothing else for him to do; and David Linton, possibly glad of the occupation, threw himself into the work. The farm was bought on terms that seemed to Bob very easy--he did not know that Mr. Linton stood security for his payments--and then began the task of stocking it and of planning just what was best to do with each paddock. The house, left bare and clean by the last owners, was in good repair, save that the dingy white painting of the exterior, and the varnished pine walls and ceilings within were depressing and shabby. Mr. Linton decided that his house-warming present to Tommy should be a coat of paint for her mansion, and soon it looked new--dark red, with a gleaming white roof, while the rooms were painted in pretty fresh colours. "Won't Tommy get a shock!" chuckled Bob gleefully. The dinginess of the house had not escaped him on the morning that they had made their first inspection, but Tommy, who loved freshness and colours, had made no sign. Had you probed the matter, Tommy would probably have remarked, with some annoyance, that it was not her job to begin by grumbling.

Wally came hurtling back from Queensland at the first hint of the influenza outbreak, and was considerably depressed at finding his twin souls, Jim and Norah, engaged in jobs that for once he could not share.

Therefore he, too, fell back on the new farm, and found Bob knitting his brow one evening over the question of furniture.

"I don't want to buy much," he said. "Tommy doesn't, either; we talked it over. We'd rather do with next to nothing, and buy decent stuff by degrees if we get on well. Tommy says she doesn't want footling little gimcracky tables and whatnots and things, nor dressing-tables full of drawers that won't pull out. But I've been looking at the cheap stuff in Cunjee, and, my word, it's nasty! Still, I can't afford good things now, and Tommy wouldn't like it if I tried to get 'em. Tommy's death on the simple life."

"How are you on tools?" queried Wally.

"Using tools? Pretty fair," admitted Bob. "I took up carpentering at school; it was always a bit of a hobby of mine. I'm no cabinet-maker, if that's what you mean."

"You don't need to be," Wally answered. "Up where I come from--we were pretty far back in Queensland--we hardly ever saw real furniture, the stuff you buy in shops. It was all made out of packing-cases and odd bits of wood. Jolly decent, too; you paint 'em up to match the rooms, or stain 'em dark colours, and the girls put sort of petticoats round some of the things."

"We began that way," said David Linton, with a half-sigh. "There was surprisingly little proper furniture in our first house, and we were very comfortable."

"Couldn't we begin, sir?" asked Wally eagerly. "This wet weather looks like setting in. Bob can't do much on the farm. If we could get out a few odd lengths of timber and some old packing cases from the towns.h.i.+p--"

"Heavens, you don't need to do that!" exclaimed their host. "The place is full of both; packing-cases have been arriving at Billabong since Jim was a baby, and very few of them have gone away again. There's plenty of timber knocking about, too. We'll go over to the farm if you like, Bob, and plan out measurements."

"I think it's a splendid idea, thanks, sir," said Bob slowly. "Only I don't quite see why I should bother you--"

"Oh, don't talk rubbis.h.!.+" said David Linton, getting up. "I believe I'm glad of the job--the place seems queer without Jim and Norah."

"My word!" said Wally. "Let's all turn carpenters, and give Tommy the surprise of her life!"

They flung themselves at the work with energy. A visit to the new house, and a careful study of each room, revealed unsuspected possibilities to Bob, whose English brain, "brought up," as Wally said, "on a stodgy diet of bedroom suites," had failed to grasp what might be done by handy people with a soul above mere fas.h.i.+on in the matter of furniture. They came back with a notebook bulging with measurements and heads seething with ideas. First, they dealt with the bedrooms, and made for each a set of long shelves and a dressing-table-cupboard--the latter a n.o.ble piece of furniture, which was merely a packing-case, smoothed, planed and fitted with shelves; the whole to be completed with a seemly petticoat when Tommy should be able to detach her mind from influenza patients.

They made her, too, a little work-table, which was simply a wide, low shelf, at which she could write or sew--planned to catch a good light from her window, so that as she sat near it, she could see the line of willows that marked the creek and the rolling plains that ended in the ranges behind Billabong. Tommy's room was painted in pale green; and when they had stained all these exciting additions dark green, Bob heaved a great sigh, and yearned audibly for the swift recovery of the influenza patients, so that Tommy could return and behold her new possessions.

"We could make washstands," said Mr. Linton, when they had fitted out the two remaining bedrooms. "But washstands are depressing things, and would take up a good deal of s.p.a.ce in these little rooms. You have a good water supply, Bob; why not have built-in basins with taps, and lay on water through the bedrooms?"

Bob whistled.

"My aunt! Is that really possible?"