Walter did not trouble himself about such things. He made friends after a fashion with the men, and rode about with his father to look after the horses, and cattle, and sheep; the maize-paddock and the potato fields; the clearers, the fencers, and the sawyers. His father soon let him go about by himself, and then he _was_ a proud and happy boy. He could scarcely believe that only a year ago he was stumbling through the irregular and defective verbs in that gloomy old Norfolk school-room. Walter could leap logs now far better than he could conjugate _Fio_ or _Inquam_ then. Of course, his father or his mother gave him lessons every now and then, but that was not like regular school, you know. Long Steve had taught him to crack a stock-whip, and Long Steve’s wife had plaited him a cabbage-tree hat (in those days the lagoon was studded with cabbage-tree palms), and Walter used to gallop through the bush like a Wild Huntsman on his own three-parts blood chestnut Dragon-fly. Sometimes he went out on foot with his little gun, and after a bit he managed to shoot wallabies and kangaroo-rats, and quail and snipe, and bronze-wings, and parrots and cockatoos to make pies of. Sometimes, too, he took his gun out with him in the boat, and shot wild duck, and now and then a black swan, on the lagoon. In the lagoon and the little river, moreover, he caught eels and schnappers, and guard-fish, and so-called bream, and mullet and trout, and delicious oysters. The Captain was very proud of the way in which his little boy took to the colony, but Mrs. Daventry was very anxious because he was out so much alone.
One day, when the Captain and Walter rode home, they found Mrs. Daventry and Phœbe almost dead with alarm. A party of blacks had taken possession of the front verandah, on which they were jabbering and gesticulating—rubbing their sides and poking their fingers down their throats. Poor Mrs. Daventry and her servant thought that these were signs that the blacks wanted to eat _them_, and therefore were ready to faint from fear. The Captain soon bundled the black fellows off the verandah, but he made it a point of policy to be kind to them, and so he ordered the cook to supply them with tea and damper and mutton chops. They ate and drank until even they could eat and drink no more, and then remarking, with great self-satisfaction, that they had “budgeree big belly,” they drowsily tramped into the bush, and lay down in the sun to sleep off their surfeit.