The Little Black Princess — Part 15

No blackfellow will talk secrets with one of these little birds about. They say they are the tell-tales of the bush, and are always spying about, listening for bits of gossip to make mischief. They call them “Jenning-gherries,” or mischief-makers, and say that they love mischief of all kinds.

“Jenning-gherrie come on,” said Goggle Eye, pointing to the little flitting, flirting bird, and I knew I should hear no more that day.

“Very well,” I said, and giving him a stick of “chewbac,” sent him back to his camp, and called Bett-Bett.

She came, carrying old “Solomon Isaacs,” our white cockatoo, on her wrist, and asked me why he had not got any legs.

“But he has,” I said. “He has two,” and I touched them to show her.

“No, Missus,” she said, “him hands,” and to prove that they were hands, she showed me that he was holding a biscuit in one of them as he nibbled at it.

“Perhaps he has one leg and one hand,” I suggested, saying that it was his leg he was standing on, and that his hand was the one with the biscuit in it.

That satisfied her, and she was just going off to play, when the miserable creature changed its biscuit into the other claw.

“Him twofellow hands, Missus,” she said, coming back to argue it all out again. Fortunately “cocky” changed the subject, by passing a few remarks about himself and the weather. Bett-Bett listened for a while, and then informed me that a white man’s spirit had jumped into “Solomon Isaacs” when he was born, and that was why he could talk. Billy Muck knew, and had said so.

Before I could think of anything to say, the gramaphone in the men’s quarters began to play, and she and Cocky went off to listen, and I had a little peace. When she came back she told me that a “white missus” and some whitefellow bosses were in the men’s rooms. I wondered whoever they could be, for “white misuses” were rather scarce “out bush,” and I hurried over to the quarters to make the lady welcome. I found no one there excepting the stockmen, and they said that no travellers at all had arrived, not even men.

I called Bett-Bett and asked where she had seen the “White Missus” and the travellers. She said she hadn’t seen them, she had only heard them singing.

“Him there, Missus,” she said, pointing to the gramaphone. “I bin hear him sing-sing.” Then she wanted to know how they had got in, and what they had to eat, “Which way whitefellow sit down, Missus?” she asked, peering down the funnel of the gramaphone, and screwing up her comical little nose as she tried to shut one eye.