But there were times when ’Possum laid aside business, and became simply the best mate imaginable.  Sometimes it would be when she had come especially early, and so could squeeze a spare hour out of the tail of the day: sometimes on a Sunday afternoon she would appear, and take possession of Garth, and they would vanish into the Bush. ’Possum taught him all her own learning: how to find all manner of birds’ nests, for which she would climb like a monkey; where the wallaby and wombat hid by day, and which were the holes that might hide her namesakes, the ’possums.  She had queer stories of the Bush fairies, and taught him to recognize the rings their dancing left in the grass, where mushrooms would come up in the autumn.  They came back from these rambles laden with treasures: yams, dug with sharp sticks, which ’Possum cooked in the fashion of the blacks; clumps of rare fern; strange fungi; cool mosses; birds’ eggs of delicate hues.  ’Possum would never take more than one egg from a nest.  "Don’t you reckon a bird’s got feelin’s, same’s you?" she would ask the abashed Garth.