The twins’ faces expressed blank amazement.
“Pay? For a friend? Well, you are queer, Helen!”
“Oh, don’t be horrid and difficult!” Helen begged. “Don’t you see that’s the only thing that makes it possible even for me to speak of it? We must pay for him somewhere: if we can’t find the sort of place we want we’ll probably have to send him to some boarding-house in the hills with a governess that we don’t know anything about—a horrible arrangement, and as far as payment goes it would cost ever so much more. But to send him to you people would be just ideal for us: Mother would know that Mrs. Weston would mother the little chap, and Mr. Weston would keep him straightened up, and you two could teach him—you’re going to teach Billy, and you might just as well have another pupil. Mother would go off to Colombo feeling as if she hadn’t a care in the world if Rex were at your place!”
“Well, we’d love to have him,” said Jean. “But—to be paid——”
“You were saying only last night how you wanted to earn money,” Helen interrupted. “Well, does it matter from whom you earn it? If you were trained nurses, do you mean to say you would only go to strangers? I think it’s just splendid if we can manage to help each other, and make things simpler all round.”
She glared triumphantly upon the twins, who sat in puzzled silence. She was Captain, and her words sounded very like sense: but all their instincts of hospitality and friendship were at war with her proposal.
“Think!” said the artful one. “You needn’t even ask your father and mother—they’d never turn us down, once you’d made the arrangement. Such a chance for you to help them—to say nothing of us! Why, it would mean that you could keep old Sarah—and think what a difference that would make! Even if you aren’t sixteen you can manage it.”
The twins drew a long breath. It was a dazzling prospect. Hard times with Sarah seemed only a circumstance to hard times without that rock of defence.
“I wonder—I wonder if Father would be awfully wild!” Jo pondered.
“Not he—once it was done. Your father has too much sense: how do you think he feels about parting Mrs. Weston from Sarah?”