About midday
In this last particular she did not differ much from the rest of the human species , but she was afflicted with an unusually strong desire to assert it . Very like Mrs Lynch in the matters of kindly soft-heartedness and sympathy was Mrs Welsh -- a poor , gentle , delicate Englishwoman , the wife of a great hulking cross-grained fellow named Abel , who was a carpenter by trade and an idler by preference . Mrs Welsh was particularly good as a sick-nurse and a cook , in which capacities she made herself extremely useful . About midday , Mrs Welsh having prepared a glorious though simple meal for her section of the emigrant band , and the other sections having been ministered to more or less successfully by their more or less capable cooks , Dominick and Otto went up to the golden cave to dinner , which they well knew the faithful Pauline would have ready waiting for them . `` What a day we have had , to be sure ! '' said Dominick as they walked along ; `` and I 'm as hungry as a kangaroo . '' Without noticing the unreasonableness of supposing that long-legged creature to be the hungriest of animals , Otto declared that he was in the same condition , `` if not more so . ''