"My good kid," said Herbert aggravatingly, "you don't know everything, and you haven't been everywhere in the Colonies, you know. But it really doesn't matter, does it? We were only saying one doesn't do that sort of thing in England. Come and wash for tea."
The small passage of arms left neither boy much pleased with the other. Herbert foresaw that Eustace was likely to be uppish and cheeky, and would want keeping in his place. Eustace thought Herbert gave himself airs, and more than justified the criticism he had long accorded his portrait. He did not look it in real life, for Herbert was manly and unaffected in appearance. "All the same," thought Eustace, "he's a silly ass."
Not so much what was said as the tone in which it was said left an unpleasant impression upon both new-comers. They had planned together that the very first thing they would do when they arrived would be to rush all over the house and see everything. Nesta declared she would not be able to sleep a wink for excitement if she did not. It had never occurred to them there would be barriers of any sort. Nothing in their own free lives hitherto had suggested baize doors through which they "ought not to go."
Somehow those baize doors were suggestive of everything irksome and disappointing; they were of a piece with all the other changes which the twins began to feel from the outset.
Before the evening was over Eustace and Nesta had grasped something of what coming to England really meant: it seemed a case of shut doors all round—there was no feeling of home about it. Rather, Eustace reflected bitterly, it was like prison, and all the freedom of existence was gone. It appeared that here the grown-ups lived in one part of the house, the children in another. There were certain times at which the drawing-room or dining-room might be visited, otherwise the grown-ups must not be interrupted. Becky and Peter were provided with a sort of jailer, whose business it also was to give all the young people their meals, and their mother seemed utterly ungetatable.
Life on the veranda always together, always in the thick of everything that was going on, with no shut doors anywhere, had ill-prepared them for this.
Then there were Herbert and Brenda.
Strange to say, Eustace and Nesta had not thought of them as anything but some one to play with—other children staying in the same house as themselves. That they were really the son and daughter of the place had never occurred to the new-comers. That they would play the part of host and hostess, and treat the Australians entirely as visitors, was a shock to Eustace and Nesta. Not thus did they expect to be received into their mother's old home, which she had always taught them to look on as their own.
Before the end of the day, however, they had realized this one thing very vividly—Herbert and Brenda had lived here all their lives, but the Orbans were outsiders, their very coldly-welcomed guests.
"It is delightful," said Mrs. Orban, as she dressed for dinner, "to think of the children getting to know each other at last. I do hope they will be happy."