“Oh, being mad keen on one’s house, and having everything ‘just-so.’ It’s really rather fun, too, only poor old Sarah’s so quaint over it; she shows us how to do a thing with heaps of ‘elbow-grease,’ and then she sighs over our doing it at all, and begs us to go and rub cold cream on our hands or they’ll never be as nice as Mother’s! Which they certainly never will,” added Jean, placing a brown paw on the table near her twin’s. “And then she goes and hurriedly cooks something we like for tea. But if we thank her she only looks down her nose and mutters something, and, if you didn’t know her well, you’d think she was offended at being thanked at all. But she’s a darling when you do happen to know her.”
There was a pounding of horses’ feet in the paddock, and Jo ran to the window. .
“Father and the boys are coming!” she cried. “They’ve been out to one of the back paddocks. Look at Rex, Tom—doesn’t he ride decently, for a new-chum?”
There was a cloud of dust, out of which the forms of the riders were looming indistinctly. Old grey Merrilegs came along at a smooth, easy canter, his rider bumping a little, but clearly happy. Mr. Weston rode a little to the right, on a big, good-looking bay, and Billy scampered in front on Punch, Jean’s pony. He rode as if he were part of the little black he was on: his hands down, his head up, all his merry face flushed with excitement.
“Rex’ll never ride like Billy,” said Tom, watching him.
“Oh, but Billy has been on a horse ever since he was six months old and Father used to take him out in front of him,” Jo said. “Billy can’t help riding. But Rex is not bad, now, is he?”
“No, indeed, he’s not. And with goggles, too—I always think glasses must be terribly hampering to a kid,” remarked Tom. “Oh, he’ll do, if only you people can keep him for a bit. It would be no end of a pity if he wasn’t able to follow up his big brothers at Grammar: they’ve been such good all-round men.”
“He’s going to be just as good as they are,” declared Jo hotly. “When he gets stronger he’ll probably be able to leave off the glasses altogether—the oculist said so. And his muscles are developing already.”
“Yes, and he can box, too,” chimed in Jean. “Father gives them lessons every night, and he says Rex will have a punch like the kick of a mule!”
“And you’re just like a pair of old hens with a turkey-chick,” grinned Tom. “You know what delicate little squeakers they are at first—have to be fed every hour, and all that sort of thing. And then, suddenly, they get big and strong and turn into proud gobblers! Take care, or that’s what young Rex will be doing—and proud gobblers have no sort of a time when they go to school.”