It is somewhat of a trouble that "Minnie" had
almost forgotten her native tongue, and that her parents have to yabber
to her in English. According to them it will be a year before Minnie
regains lingual facility. In the meantime great pains are being taken
with her education, and her accomplishments promise to be varied,
though entirely unornamental. She will in time be able to recognise at
a glance the particular kind of decayed timber in which the delicious
white grub resides, will know that the nut of the cycad has to be
immersed in a running stream before it is "good fella," and how to grind
the kernel into flour, and how to mould the dough into a German
sausage-shaped damper; she will be able to walk about the reef, picking
up blacklip oysters and clams, without lacerating the soles of her feet,
and to make a dilly-bag, and, finally, to enjoy a smoke.
Mickie appreciates a joke. When Jinny complained that the scrub caught
her brand new pipe and had broken it short off, Mickie with an
extravagant grimace softly urged her to go along Townsville and buy
another.
He is also superstitious. After dark he will not move a yard from his
camp without a flaring torch of paper bark, a fiery aspersorium for the
scaring of the "debil-debil.
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