Wong as Annie? Wong would make her cakes even when his
pigtail hung despondently from his aching head after an opium debauch,
and his cheeks were shining with anything but gladness; for if you get
drunk very often on opium you shine.

Old Billy was mostly to be found where there was a chance of a drink;
but if the fountains were dried up, or he had been insulted by some
democratic, revolutionary, king-hating miner knocking his high hat down
over his eyes, he usually went up to Mr. Colborn's place, and sat on
the fence, or on a log outside the gate. So he was often very melancholy
when Annie came out. One day his hat was very, very badly bulged indeed.

"Your hat is very bad to-day, King Billy," said six-year-old Annie, as
she stood in front of him critically, with her head on one side. Without
knowing it, the child had come to look upon the state of the poor king's
hat as emblematical of his state of mind. When it shut up like a closed
concertina his barometer was low.

"Yes, missy," said the king; "white man knock 'um over eyes, and"--with
a rub down his face--"skin 'um nose."

She inspected his nose carefully--though from a certain distance,
because her own nose was very good, both inside and out, and she knew
the king never got washed unless it rained when he was very drunk. And
this was the end of summer. It had not rained since November.

"There is not very much skin off," said Annie. "You had better wash it."

The king made a wry face and changed the conversation.

"You got 'um hat, Missy Annie? One hat baal brokum, allasame white
fellow hat. Bad hat, King Billy bad; black fellow, white fellow laugh."

He peered into his hat, and, trying to straighten it out, put his fist
through the side. Poor Billy looked as if he could cry.

"You stop a minute," said Annie, and, flying indoors, she brought out a
very good high hat indeed. "Budgeree!" thought the king, that was a good
hat. He could go down the streets like a king indeed, able to hold up
his head with any rich man in Ballarat. He tried it on, and though it
was much too big, he knew it shone. And the glory of a hat is in its
shining as much as its shape; even a black fellow knows that.

But that hat very nearly led to serious trouble. For one thing, Mr.
Colborn missed it; and never thinking Annie had given it away, when
he saw the king sitting on the fence decorated with it, he stopped and
interviewed him.

"Where did you get that hat, you old thief?"