Now, just the other morning, Tom announced that "Little Jinny" was sick
"along a bingey" (stomach), and suggested that salt medicine might do
her good. It was quite a common occurrence for her to be sick. It was
such an easy and excellent excuse for a day's holiday, when she would
bask on the soft grey sand and smoke, gazing across the placid bay and
waiting for meal-times. So no one took her sickness seriously.
Subsequent inquiries, however, elicited the fact that "Little Jinny"
had eaten little or no tucker the day prior to Tom's application for
medicine on her behalf, and that she was really entitled to sympathy of
the most practical kind. But no one had the least suspicion of the fact.
Dinner-time came and she did not appear, though she was strolling about
the flat below the house, apparently only a "little bit sick," as Tom
reported when he came up to his work.
"That one all right to-morrow," was the reply to an inquiry.
But at five o'clock Tom visited his hut, and hurried back for medicine.
"Little Jinny" was very bad. We went down with remedies that seemed
fit from his diagnosis of the case and description of the symptoms, and
there lay "Little Jinny," obviously dying.
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