Page 6 - A Little Bush Maid

the gardener, Hogg, was terribly strict, and woe betide the author of any
small footmarks that he found on one of the freshly raked surfaces. Nothing

annoyed him more than the odd bulbs that used to come up in the midst of
his precious buffalo grass; impertinent crocuses and daffodils and

hyacinths, that certainly had no right there. "Blest if T know how they ever
gets there!" Hogg would say, scratching his head. Whereat Norah was wont
to retire behind a pyramid tree for purposes of mirth.

Hogg’s sworn foe was Lee Wing, the Chinese gardener, who reigned

supreme in the orchard and the kingdom of vegetables--not quite the same
thing as the vegetable kingdom, by the way! Lee Wing was very fat, his
broad, yellow face generally wearing a cheerful grin--unless he happened to

catch sight of Hogg. His long pigtail was always concealed under his
flapping straw hat. Once Jim, who was Norah’s big brother, had found him

asleep in his hut with the pigtail drooping over the edge of the bunk. Jim
thought the opportunity too good to lose and, with such deftness that the
Celestial never stirred, he tied the end of the pigtail to the back of a

chair--with rather startling results when Lee Wing awoke with a sudden
sense of being late, and made a spring from the bunk. The chair of course

followed him, and the loud yell of fear and pain raised by the victim
brought half the homestead to the scene of the catastrophe. Jim was the
only one who did not wait for developments. He found business at the

lagoon.

The queerest part of it was that Lee Wing firmly believed Hogg to be the
author of his woe. Nothing moved him from this view, not even when Jim,
finding how matters stood, owned up like a man. "You allee same goo’

boy," said the pigtailed one, proffering him a succulent raw turnip. "Me
know. You tellee fine large crammee. Hogg, he tellee crammee, too. So dly

up!" And Jim, finding expostulation useless, "dried up" accordingly and ate
the turnip, which was better than the leek.

To the right of the homestead at Billabong a clump of box trees sheltered
the stables that were the unspoken pride of Mr. Linton’s heart.