“Well, we’ll correct them. But I don’t want to be too harsh, poor little motherless things.”
“Yes, and fatherless, too. We must be very good to them, Rachel, but it isn’t true kindness to be too indulgent, you know.”
“No, of course not. We must be firm, yet gentle.”
And so the two ladies discussed the management of the twins, not realising at all, that on the contrary, the twins were managing them! For though good and obedient children, Dick and Dolly generally succeeded in getting their own sweet way, as witness the case of Phyllis Middleton.
CHAPTER X
AN AUCTION SALE
Life at Dana Dene settled down into a pleasant routine that was in no sense monotony. Every day the sewing and the practising and the gardening had their appointed hours. But this left hours and hours of play-time, and the twins improved them all.
Phyllis and Dolly were very chummy little companions, and scarcely a day passed without their seeing each other.
Dick and Jack Fuller were chums too, and though the twins became acquainted with many of the other children in Heatherton, they liked these earliest made friends best of all.
Often they went to town, for Dana Dene was about a mile out from the village itself. Sometimes they drove in state with the aunties, or perhaps less formally, on morning errands. Sometimes they rode on the big spring wagon with Pat or Michael, and sometimes on pleasant days, they walked.