uite manage that
now, and so walks with me, rubbing at my shoulders the while with his
grass-stained, dewy lips, till we see a suitable stump or log, from
which I can conveniently mount him. Then, with occasional thrusts
round of his head to nuzzle one of my ankles, or to snatch a tempting
bit of greenery, he carries me home, and together--for he superintends
this operation with the most close and anxious care, his foreparts
well inside the feed-house--we mix his breakfast, first in an old
four-gallon oil-can, and then in the manger, and I sit beside him and
smoke a cigarette till the meal is well under weigh.

I have made Punch something of a gourmand, and each meal has to
contain, besides its foundation of wheaten chaff and its _piece de
resistance_ of cracked maize, a flavouring of oats--say, three double
handfuls--and a thorough sprinkling, well rubbed in, of bran. If the
proportions are wrong, or any of the constituents of the meal lacking,
Punch snorts, whinnies, turns his rump to the manger, and demands my
instant attention. I was intensely amused one day when, sitting in the
slab and bark stable, through whose crevices seeing and hearing are
easy, to overhear the mail-man telling Mrs. Blades that, upon his Sam,
I was for all the world like an old maid with her canary in the way I
dry-nursed that blessed horse; by ghost, I was! He was particularly
struck, was this good man, by my insane practice of sometimes taking
Punch for a walk in the bush, as though he were a dog, and without
ever mounting him.

Punch provided for, my own ablutions are performed in the wood-shed,
where I have learned to bathe with the aid of a sponge and a bucket of
water, and have a shower worked by a cord connected with a perforated
nail-can. By this time my billy-can is probably spluttering over the
hearth, and I make tea and toast, after possibly eating an orange. And
so the day is fairly started, and I am free to think, to read, to
write, or to enjoy idleness, after a further chat with Punch when
turning him out to graze. My wood-chopping I do either before
breakfast or towards the close of the day; the latter, I think, more
often than the former. It makes a not unpleasant salve for the
conscience of a mainly idle man, after the super-fatted luxury of
afternoon tea and a biscuit or scone.

An Australian bushman would call my tea no more than water bewitched,
and my small pinch of China leaves in an infuser spoon but a mean
mockery o