"Pooh," said Eustace, "that was only his fun. Aunt Dorothy knew it."
But Nesta could not stand teasing herself, and was sure no one liked or understood it.
"I don"t know," she said; "she used to get red sometimes. And I"m not so sure Bob did mean it all in chaff. He has a real down-on-anything-English. I mean to ask him some day what he thinks of English girls" pluck now."
"If you do," said Eustace, with sudden ferocity, "I"ll never speak to you again."
Nesta stared at him in dismay.
"Why ever?" she asked dully. "Wouldn"t he like to talk about her?
Didn"t he like her, really?"
"Like her!" Eustace exclaimed. "Oh, you little stupid! Didn"t you see him when Peter was telling us about her? Didn"t you hear Bob then? Can"t you understand?"
Nesta stared in blank silence for some seconds.
"Oh, I say!" she gasped, "I didn"t know! I never thought of that!
I--I wasn"t looking at him."
"I wasn"t looking at anything else," said Eustace; "but I guess he wouldn"t like to think any one knew, so we must hold our tongues.
But I couldn"t have you going and asking him blundering questions."
"I won"t," said Nesta, with unwonted meekness. "When did you guess?"
"Only then," said Eustace; "but now I can remember lots of things.
Bob always liked talking to her better than any one. Bob didn"t want her to go. Bob asked her to come back."
He broke off short and slammed out of the room. It was as bad to think of as it had been to bear his mother"s helpless loneliness; for as he could do nothing then for her, he could do nothing now for Bob.
It was a matter of conjecture between the twins what was likely to happen next. They really expected that, when Peter was well enough for the rough journey, they would all go back to the plantation, and settle down again for ever and ever.
A telegram had been dispatched with the bad news to Mr. and Mrs.
Chase. The reply was an urgent appeal for them all to go on as first intended.
Leaving everything on the plantation in Bob"s care, Mr. Orban decided to take his wife and family home himself. It would not be the joyful home-coming they had antic.i.p.ated; and Mrs. Orban would need him, he knew.
"We must do what we can for the poor dear old people," Mr. Orban explained to Bob. "Dorothy was their baby. It is a terrible loss to them."
"To every one," said Bob briefly.
CHAPTER XVII.
MOTHER"S HOME.
In the length and breadth of England there could hardly have been found a more lovely little property than Maze Court. There were larger houses in the neighbourhood, with more extensive grounds; but as Brenda Dixon stood on the terrace and gazed down towards the good old English park she felt a real glow of pride and pleasure in belonging to such a place. It was the sort of feeling she had whenever she brought a new school friend home for the holidays.
Beside her stood Herbert--long, lean, and very gentlemanly in his flannels. It was one of his sister"s great joys that he always looked a gentleman in everything.
She was a striking-looking girl herself, with features a little too p.r.o.nounced for accurate beauty; but this very fault had the effect of making her handsome. She had little personal vanity--mere features she cared nothing for--but pride of birth and of the old home were deeply rooted in her.
"I think Nesta and Eustace ought to be surprised," she was thinking; "they won"t have seen anything like it. It will seem so big and splendid to them after the kind of life they have had."
Brenda was never very sure how to picture the Orbans" existence in Queensland. There was a touch of pettiness about it--a feeling of poverty and "hugger-muggerness," if one may coin such a word. The thought of her uncle going daily to his work in his shirt-sleeves; of her aunt helping in the housework; her cousins brought up just anyhow, without a governess or any schooling, shocked her sensibilities and gave vivid local colouring to her ideas about the Orbans. Those were the sort of details she would never have referred to at school.
And now she and Herbert were waiting for the arrival of the travellers, whom their grandparents had driven to the station to meet.
"Oh dear," she said with a sigh, "how I wish I didn"t wish they weren"t coming! If they are fearfully eccentric, all the neighbourhood will be talking about it in a week, and thinking it funny we have such relations. One can"t explain to every one that they really are ladies and gentlemen gone to seed, can one?"
"Not exactly," said Herbert. "I jolly well hope you won"t try; it would be beastly bad form. Of course if one had a fellow staying in the house one might have to explain."
"I simply couldn"t ask any one," Brenda said. "It would be all over the school next term my uncle was a common labourer, and my cousins savages--or something!"
"Nice sort of friends you seem to have," said Herbert. "Is that a girl"s usual way?"
"Well," said Brenda, with some asperity, "boys aren"t any better, if you should have to explain matters to a chum of yours."
"That"s different," Herbert said; "one doesn"t want to give a bad impression. What I hope is that Eustace isn"t an awful little m.u.f.f.
I expect he is, though--can"t help being when he has never been amongst any boys. It will have to be knocked out of him."
"Aunt Dorothy said he was a very nice little chap," Brenda quoted, and then her voice broke, so that she could not go on.
It was the beginning of the summer holidays, and both she and Herbert were feeling the death of Miss Chase most dreadfully. It had been bad enough when she left before the end of the winter holidays. Again at Easter the dullness of the house without her had known no bounds. But now, when they knew she would never be with them again, her very name choked them; they could scarcely speak of her, because her absence proved at every turn all that her presence had meant to them and to every one. How they had hated Australia when she left! How much more they hated it now and everything to do with it--even the coming of the cousins! Australia seemed the root of all evil--the cause of Aunt Dorothy"s death.
"Aunt Dorothy was a brick," said Herbert jerkily; "she saw niceness in people whatever they were like. But girls don"t really know when fellows are m.u.f.fs."
"I don"t know about Eustace," said Brenda, "but Nesta looked fearfully long-legged and queerly dressed in those snapshots Aunt Dorothy did."
"I hope she won"t want to kiss me when she says "How-do-you-do,""
said Herbert; "that is all I mind about her. But if that kid Eustace fancies he is going to hang around with me perpetually, he will find himself mistaken. I couldn"t be bothered."
"But we shall have to look after them properly, and treat them just as we would any other visitors," Brenda said anxiously; "we can"t sort of leave them to themselves, you know."
"Of course," said Herbert rather testily; "what do you take me for?
I hope I shan"t behave like a cad in my own house! But that is just the nuisance of it: they"ll be visitors without being visitors, and they"ll be here such an awful time. Thank goodness, there will be term time to look forward to!"
"If only Aunt Dorothy--" began Brenda.
"Oh, shut up," said Herbert roughly. Then added more gently, "I think the carriage has just turned in at the park gate. Listen."
All through the voyage Eustace and Nesta had been picturing this very day--this very hour. The parting with Bob and the farewell to home necessarily dropped into the background of their thoughts; the foreground was full of expectations. Now that they could realize they were on their way to the fulfilment of what had originally been the dream of their lives, all the old feeling of longing possessed them. At last they would see England! At last they would know what real "home" was like--their mother"s old home, to which she had given them such a sense of belonging by all the tales they knew so well!
That England was not what they expected was natural enough. Mrs.
Orban had never pretended to describe England, but simply her own particular corner of it on the borders of Wales. Leaving the ship was all bustle and rush, but during the long train journey there was plenty of time to look about, and English scenery struck all three children as most peculiar.
"Why, it"s just like a map!" exclaimed Peter, as he knelt up at a window. "I"m certain if I was up in a balloon it would look like a map with all those funny little hedges."