“Then we’ll all go and sit and watch the grass grow and the cattle get fat,” said Jo. “Won’t it be fun, Rex?”
“Will they really get fat while you look at them?” asked the small boy, round-eyed behind his spectacles.
“Rather,” said Tom. “Of course, there are a few shy ones, which don’t like getting fat in front of people, and they make for the scrub!”
“I don’t think that’s true!” said Rex solemnly. At which everybody laughed, and Jean offered him a cake, which he ate in puzzled silence, pondering on the queer ways of country folk. They were very jolly, Rex thought, and he had quite made up his mind that when he was grown-up he would own a station and manage it himself. But there was no doubt that they were sometimes difficult to understand, and occasionally they talked a language all their own, full of words that were quite unfamiliar to him. He had mental notes of several queer expressions he would ask the twins to explain: Why bullocks were “poor as crows,” and why a crow was poor, anyhow; and what it was that cattle held when they were said “to hold their own,” and how did they hold anything? Rex had ridden that afternoon round more cattle than he had ever been near before, but none of them were attempting to hold things, their own or anyone else’s. He longed to catch a twin by herself, that he might ask her. Other people might—and did—laugh at him; but never the twins.
Tom said good-bye presently, and they all went out to the gate with him, after the friendly Bush fashion, and watched him disappear in a cloud of dust. The twins hurried back to take out the tea-tray.
In the kitchen they came suddenly upon Sarah, who straightened up guiltily at their approach. But the twins had seen, for a moment, a bowed head, her face hidden in her hands; and as she turned from them to stir a saucepan which obviously contained only hot water they saw that she was pale, with heavy rings under her eyes. Jean looked a minute, and then put down her tray.
“What’s the matter, Sarah?”
“There ain’t nothing the matter,” Sarah said. “What would there be?”
“I don’t know,” said Jean. “But there’s something, all the same. Tell us, Sarah dear—let’s help.”
“Well, I’ve just a little ’eadache,” admitted the gaunt handmaiden.