“They’ll have their good time,” he said masterfully. “Your motor will be part of it. And we’re all going away for a holiday, as soon as I get things settled—a real holiday—Sydney, Tasmania, or wherever you like, where we’ll forget about droughts. We’ll let the twins choose, shall we? They’ve been great little daughters to us when we needed them.”
“Great little daughters!” Mrs. Weston echoed softly.
“Then we’ll get a tutor for the boys, and the twins can go back to Merriwa next term. We’ll tell Miss Dampier not to make them prefects yet awhile. I want them to be kiddies again—to forget they ever had responsibilities.”
He was silent for a moment, pulling hard at his pipe.
“It isn’t so much what they did for us,” he said; “though goodness knows they did enough. It was how they did it: how they brought youth and freshness and laughter back to us—how they ‘kept smiling.’ Will you ever forget how they sang as they swept the verandahs?—the little bricks! And never a whine or a murmur from them, though I’ll bet they often ached for the old good times!”
“I know they ached,” the mother said. “Please God we’ll keep that sort of ache from them in future—at least while they are children.”
* * * * *
At the moment the twins were not manifesting any ache, unless it were the ache that comes from overmuch laughter. They had dismissed Rex and Billy after morning school, and had watched those graceless urchins tear down the paddock on their ponies. Then they had turned to tidy up the schoolroom table, and in doing so a sheet of paper had fluttered from an exercise book. It was covered with Rex’s small, neat writing.
“It’s not a letter,” Jo said, picking it up. “I don’t suppose it’s private. Oh, my goodness, Jean, he’s dropped into poetry!”
They bent delighted heads over Master Forester’s outpourings. The path of spelling was always strewn with rocks to Rex, but his sentiments were definite.