He would wait expectantly until she wrote.

With a few strokes of her pen she might end her irksome captivity in this wall-less prison of desert plain--this wilderness of gum and gidia.
As she lay there in the hammock, a child's clumpy boots pattered along the garden path and Tommy Hensor came up the steps with a big cabbage leaf gathered in his hand.

He opened it out when he reached the veranda and displayed three Brazilian cherries, the first fruits of a plant growing in the Chinaman's garden.
'La-ship ...

La-ship! I got these myself.

I made Fo Wung give 'em me for you.' At any other time the child's offering would have been received, at any rate, graciously.