oose End would, some day, reach right
across the Continent.... The middle and largest room had two doors at
opposite sides. It was the living-room. The others, which were either
stores, bedrooms, or fowl-pens, had a window in one wall--glassless,
formed of trellis--and a door in the other. A boarded platform ran right
round the house to a depth of nine feet and the roof of the rooms,
projecting over the platform, kept out rain and heat. There was much
corrugated zinc and rough wood, many kerosene tins and boxes in the
make-up of Loose End, but all the rooms were miraculously watertight.
The room into which Marcella was shown was a sleeping-room and nothing
more. There were three hammocks slung from wall to wall and one camp-bed
still folded up. But while she was apparently talking to Marcella, Mrs.
Twist whisked open a tin trunk, put a white linen cloth on the little
table in the corner and, running out of the room, came back with a
small, cracked mirror she had borrowed from her own room.

When she came into the living-room, after strenuous work in removing the
dust of travel, Marcella found that Louis had been taken possession of
by some of the children, and been to the creek for a bathe. One of
them--apparently a girl, since she was called Betty--had filled a jam
tin with water and put in a bunch of bush roses; the big kerosene lamp
hanging from the ceiling shone upon seven cropped heads, seven brown
faces and fourteen bare, brown legs swinging from the bench on which the
children sat. Fourteen bright eyes shining in faces polished with soap
divided passionate interest between Marcella and the epoch-making pot of
jam on the table. Mr. Twist told the guests to sit down; he made the tea
while Mrs. Twist dished up an enormous tin full of chops and fried eggs,
placing a china washing-basin full of potatoes beside them.

"We need such a lot," she said with a laugh. "I did have an enamelled
soup tureen I used for the potatoes, but the enamel chipped off a bit
and I thought it might hurt the children if they swallowed it. So now we
put the potatoes in the washing-basin and wash up in the tureen."

While the meal was in progress they all talked at once. The children
after their first shyness had worn off were entranced when they learnt
that their guests had, only a few months ago, been in a real ship on the
real sea. Marcella, in turn, was fascinated in watching the manoeuvre
with which Jerry concealed the fact that there w