Birrung the Secret Friend Read Online Free PDF Page B

orange carrot could grow from a seed like a speck of dust? Or that potatoes grew under the ground and you had to dig them up? I wondered who was the first person who ever thought of digging up the ground to see if there was food under there.
    But there were other things to learn too, indoor stuff, that weren’t so interesting. Mrs Johnson looked sweet and gentle, but she had iron inside her too. When she asked me to do something, it got done. How to speak and hold my knife and fork and not to swear, which was hard because I didn’t even know I was swearing back then. And how to read words on a slate then in the books, and learn the stories about God and Jesus and the others.
    But the stories were good when she read them to us, especially the smiting bits, and Roman swords, and this one where Jesus turned two fish and five loaves of bread into enough food to feed a multitude. That is still one of myfavourite stories, that one. We could have used Jesus in the colony. Mr Johnson said He was always there, but I can’t say I noticed Him around much, except in the clergyman’s house. But I never said that to Mr and Mrs Johnson.
    Elsie learned her letters too, faster than I did, so fast I wondered if she already knew them. Her writing on the slate was all neat and curled, not snail tracks on a cabbage leaf like mine. Elsie was getting stronger every day, with all the potatoes and scrambled eggs and stews. Seemed she knew how to do a lot of things now she had food in her belly and was in a proper house. She could stir pots without being shown how and scrub floors and even take up the hem of the dress Mrs Johnson gave her so it didn’t drag on the ground.
    Elsie could peel a potato too. I’d never even known that gentlefolk like the skin off; and, as for peeling, I nearly cut my thumb off the first time I tried. Mrs Johnson was teaching Elsie to cook, not just pease pudding and boiled cabbage, but gentlefolk’s foods like pancakes, with our flour ration (Mr Johnson got Elsie a ration now too) and eggs from our hens and milk from the goats.
    Elsie could make goat’s cheese now, and goat’s-milk yeast, to make the damper light, and a fish stew with potatoes and herbs from the garden that was so goodit could knock your stockings off. Mrs Johnson was teaching Sally more cooking too, because Sally had been a maid, not a cook or even scullery maid, before she’d done whatever crime had got her sent to New South Wales.
    But Elsie still didn’t speak, no matter how much Mrs Johnson coaxed her.
    It was grand to sleep in a bed, to eat all I wanted. More than grand not to be scared all the time, to know Elsie didn’t have to be scared any more either. But living with Birrung was best of all. Every morning when I woke up, I thought: There’s going to be breakfast. Then my second thought was: Birrung will be there.
    Birrung laughed all the time. Laughed at the men digging clay next door. Laughed when Mr Johnson brought in basket after basket of cucumbers, and got us to count them, which was a clever way of getting me to work out how to count to two thousand, because that was how many cucumbers there were. I learned how to eat cucumbers too. Ma and me had never eaten this ‘salad’ stuff that the Johnsons liked so much, sliced cucumbers and lettuce leaves not cooked at all, but eaten with goat’s cheese crumbled on top. I made a face first time I tried it. Took me a few mouthfuls to realise it was good — and Birrung laughed.
    Birrung laughed at me too when I stared as she grabbed a big lizard by its tail and bashed it against a tree. Then I laughed when Sally screamed when Birrung took the lizard into the house, and wanted to roast it on the cook fire.
    Birrung was like one of Mr Johnson’s miracles. The whole colony was gloomy those days, stores running low and hard work they weren’t used to, and strange trees and summer when it should be winter. Even Mr and Mrs Johnson