Billy and Rex used to appear in the kitchen also, demanding nourishment. Rex had willingly agreed to the plan of learning to milk and to use an axe. He never attempted to hint that he cared either for cows or for chopping; but it had very soon become evident that he was keenly anxious to be as strong as other boys of his age, and he welcomed any chance of developing his muscles. They would hurriedly swallow cups of weak tea, and, their hands full of scones, trot off to the paddock near the house, where the three milkers, which were all that the drought had left of Mr. Weston’s herd, awaited them. It was never hard to yard the milkers, for there was scarcely anything left for them to eat in the paddock. Down by the river there was still some dry, stick-like grass, on which they browsed for forms’ sake during the day; but green feed welcomed them at milking-times—lucerne, from the little patch that was irrigated through the efforts of a windmill which brought from the spring enough water for household purposes, and a little extra. The cows needed no bell to summon them when the hours for lucerne drew near.
The girls’ room had two long windows, opening upon the verandah where their beds were placed. It was a cheery place, with little to indicate that it was used as anything but a sitting-room: the stained floor boasted a couple of good rugs, easily moved when necessary, and there was an old sofa, disreputable, but astonishingly comfortable when once you had learned to accommodate your person to the places where its springs were broken. Two or three inviting chairs were scattered about; there was a business-like writing-table with the drawers on the east sacred to Jo, and the western ones Jean’s property. A rather good Japanese screen hid the dressing-table—not that the twins had much use for a dressing-table, since their bobbed curls demanded little more than hard brushing, and their frocks were of the type that is easiest to slip on hastily. Tennis-racquets and hockey-sticks were displayed upon the wall, and there were many school photographs, as well as those of the home-folk. A long, low cupboard ran along one wall. To its kindly recesses was due the fact that the twins’ room was nearly always tidy. “It’s a mercy we’ve got it!” Jean would say, tossing old shoes, or battered hats, or half-soiled aprons into its capacious interior. “And Mother’s such a brick—she never dreams of looking inside it!”
“Mother’s an awfully understanding person,” Jo would answer. “She says if it weren’t for Sarah she wouldn’t have any reputation for tidiness herself!”
For Mother never failed to understand. Perhaps it was because her own gay youth was not so very far behind her; perhaps because of her great love for these cheery, curly-haired twins, with their merry faces. She knew—somehow—when the famous programme did not seem to run smoothly: when the housework developed unexpected difficulties, or the teaching faculty seemed suddenly deficient. Then she would make an appearance, as if accidentally, and things would smooth out. Her sovereign prescription on these occasions was open air. Generally, she would take over the small boys, and the twins would find themselves suddenly despatched on an errand to the township, or, best of all, sent out in the paddocks with their father. For though Emu Plains might be scorched and bare, and the stock weak and starved, so that riding out on the run had lost something of its joy, it still remained the chief of all pleasures.
But it was not often that the programme failed to work. After early tea the twins made a triumphal progress from one room to another, sweeping and dusting. They generally sang, too, loudly and cheerily, what their voices lacked being made up in enthusiasm. They swept verandahs, and made beds, and trimmed lamps, and gathered what flowers the drought had spared, which were not many. The work, like the songs, was made into a duet, so far as was possible, for the twins hated to work apart. When they dusted a room together they did it in a kind of drill, each taking one half—the work calculated so that they finished at the same moment. They swept the wide verandah, that ran round three sides of the house, in a concerted movement, beginning at opposite ends and making a race of it until they met in the middle, at the steps leading down from the front door. This lent great excitement to the job, and Mr. Weston had even been known to appear near the finish, to cheer on the panting combatants.
Most of the housework was done before breakfast, and then odd jobs took up the time until nine o’clock, when Rex and Billy were supposed to be in readiness on the verandah, with scrubbed hands and faces, and persons displaying as little dust as possible, considering that the persons were those of small boys. Rex had, by this time, undergone his riding-lessons, and his appearance was fairly certain, since Mr. Weston used to dismiss him at five minutes to nine, telling him to hurry up and get ready for school. But Billy was a will-o’-the-wisp creature, and rules and regulations meant little to him. He was never openly defiant: he was merely oblivious of time and space, when engaged in any of the thousand-and-one “ploys” in which his soul delighted; and against that bland armour of forgetfulness the twins’ wrath fell blunted. “I never really meant not to be there,” he used to say, with wide, innocent eyes, after an indignant twin, wailing his name disconsolately, had run him to earth in the orchard, or the stables, or on the river-bank. “It isn’t truly nine yet, is it?” When assured in pungent tones that it was long after nine, he would exclaim, “My word, I must hurry up, then!”—and would take to his heels; so that when his teacher, heated in more ways than one, arrived on the verandah, it was to find him awaiting her, washed and brushed, and with a disarming twinkle in his eye. The pursuing twin invariably twinkled in response.
“He’s awful, of course,” they would say. “But we were young, once, ourselves!”
Rex, so far, committed no breaches of discipline. When alone with Billy there were signs that his polish was, after all, merely skin-deep, and was even wearing off in places; but with the other members of the family he maintained a calm correctness of demeanour that the twins found almost painful. He drilled painstakingly, in a solid fashion; the twins sighed over his heavy movements, even while they rebuked Billy, who loved to prance through his “physical jerks” like the light-footed elf he was. To lessons Rex brought a dull hatred that somewhat astonished the twins, since it was evident from the first that he was by no means deficient in brains. Only when he dealt with figures was he at all happy, and as Jean put it, resentfully, “he just wallows in sums.” Jean herself having a constitutional dislike to adding even two and two, mathematics were always left to her twin, so that her share of the lessons was rather wearying.
“There must be a reason for it,” she puzzled, one day. “I wonder if he had very frowsy governesses.”
“We’ll ask him,” Jo declared.