Queensland Cousins Part 33

"Well, it is just as sensible as saying we had meals with the servants," said the boy, in such a tone of disgust that Herbert was left in no doubt as to his meaning.

"You needn't be cheeky, youngster," he said; "you can't expect me to know your habits, can you? I do know people in the Colonies can't pick and choose their company, and have to make friends with cowboys and bushrangers, if they want any society."

"What!" shouted the twins. "Who told you that?"

"Oh, I've read it somewhere," Herbert said carelessly. "It said 'there are no cla.s.s distinctions in Colonial life. Men and women meet as equals.'"

"Then it is rot," said Eustace briefly. "I don't know how you could believe it. Our friends were all gentlemen and ladies. Australians are as particular as you are whom they have for friends."

"My good kid," said Herbert aggravatingly, "you don't know everything, and you haven't been everywhere in the Colonies, you know. But it really doesn't matter, does it? We were only saying one doesn't do that sort of thing in England. Come and wash for tea."

The small pa.s.sage of arms left neither boy much pleased with the other. Herbert foresaw that Eustace was likely to be uppish and cheeky, and would want keeping in his place. Eustace thought Herbert gave himself airs, and more than justified the criticism he had long accorded his portrait. He did not look it in real life, for Herbert was manly and unaffected in appearance. "All the same," thought Eustace, "he's a silly a.s.s."

Not so much what was said as the tone in which it was said left an unpleasant impression upon both new-comers. They had planned together that the very first thing they would do when they arrived would be to rush all over the house and see everything. Nesta declared she would not be able to sleep a wink for excitement if she did not. It had never occurred to them there would be barriers of any sort. Nothing in their own free lives. .h.i.therto had suggested baize doors through which they "ought not to go."

Somehow those baize doors were suggestive of everything irksome and disappointing; they were of a piece with all the other changes which the twins began to feel from the outset.

Before the evening was over Eustace and Nesta had grasped something of what coming to England really meant: it seemed a case of shut doors all round--there was no feeling of home about it. Rather, Eustace reflected bitterly, it was like prison, and all the freedom of existence was gone. It appeared that here the grown-ups lived in one part of the house, the children in another. There were certain times at which the drawing-room or dining-room might be visited, otherwise the grown-ups must not be interrupted. Becky and Peter were provided with a sort of jailer, whose business it also was to give all the young people their meals, and their mother seemed utterly ungetatable.

Life on the veranda always together, always in the thick of everything that was going on, with no shut doors anywhere, had ill-prepared them for this.

Then there were Herbert and Brenda.

Strange to say, Eustace and Nesta had not thought of them as anything but some one to play with--other children staying in the same house as themselves. That they were really the son and daughter of the place had never occurred to the new-comers. That they would play the part of host and hostess, and treat the Australians entirely as visitors, was a shock to Eustace and Nesta.

Not thus did they expect to be received into their mother's old home, which she had always taught them to look on as their own.

Before the end of the day, however, they had realized this one thing very vividly--Herbert and Brenda had lived here all their lives, but the Orbans were outsiders, their very coldly-welcomed guests.

"It is delightful," said Mrs. Orban, as she dressed for dinner, "to think of the children getting to know each other at last. I do hope they will be happy."

"All the happier for being thrown so much together," said Mr.

Orban. "We couldn't help it, of course, but ours have been thrown far too much with older people. This sort of thing is much healthier for them."

"It is all hateful," wept Nesta to her pillow that night. "Herbert is a bully, and Brenda is a stuck-up pig--and I wish we had never come."

And Eustace did not close his eyes for hours.

"Bob was quite right," he thought. "English people are horrid; they freeze you right up the minute you see them. But oh! I believe it would be better if only there was a veranda. They do live in such a queer way, all divided up like this."

Back into his mind there came the refrain of one of Bob's songs--the one he had sung to Aunt Dorothy the day of her arrival.

He went to sleep with the tune ringing in his head,--

"Certain for darkies dis is not de place, Where eben de sun am ashamed to show his face."

CHAPTER XVIII.

PETER MAKES A DIVERSION.

But for Peter and Becky schoolroom breakfast next morning would have been a very dismal and quiet affair, for the elder cousins had little to say to each other.

Herbert and Brenda cudgelled their brains for topics of conversation to keep things going, and they thought they had never had any one so difficult to talk to in their lives. The Australian cousins seemed downright stupid and uninteresting. Just for one thing Brenda was thankful--they were not outwardly so unpresentable as she had antic.i.p.ated.

Nesta, still smarting under a sense of disappointment, had made a sullen resolution not to appear to want to know anything at all. In spite of Herbert's a.s.surances she was quite sure she did know a great deal about the house and grounds. Brenda and he should see later that she did.

Eustace held his tongue because he had literally nothing to say that was at all agreeable. They had begun the day by going into their mother's room to say good-morning.

"O children," she had exclaimed when she saw them, "isn't it all lovely?"

"It is, mummie," began Nesta in such a miserable voice that Eustace knew she was going on with a "but."

There were tears of joy in Mrs. Orban's eyes. To her at least everything was perfect. Eustace was standing close to Nesta, and he gave her a surrept.i.tious pinch that just nipped the complaint right off before the "but" could come out.

"It is ripping, mother," he said. "I never thought it would be half so splendid."

"I knew you would love it," said Mrs. Orban confidently; "and it is so jolly for you having Brenda and Herbert. If only--"

She stopped, and her face had grown suddenly sad. There was always that "if only." The twins knew she was thinking of Aunt Dorothy.

"Look here, Nesta," said Eustace in a low voice when they left the room, "don't you go grumbling to mother and spoiling everything for her, or you will be a selfish little pig."

"But when things are horrid--" began Nesta.

"It won't make them better to worry her," said Eustace shortly.

"But how could you say it is splendid?" Nesta said with a choke.

"Well, isn't it?" said Eustace. "I was thinking about the house and the park. It was not the people mother told us about before we came, but the place."

"Grannie and grandfather are not a bit like what I thought," Nesta remarked in an aggrieved tone.

"They are very beautiful," said Eustace in an awed voice. "They somehow match the house and everything in it, and it seems to make them much too grand for us."

"I know Herbert and Brenda think _themselves_ much too grand for us," said Nesta crossly. "Fancy their thinking such silly things about the way we lived, just as if we weren't ladies and gentlemen!

Why, last night, when Brenda told me we were to go in to dessert, she said, 'You know people always dress for dinner in England,' in that snubby way of hers; and I laughed right out, and said, 'Goodness, father and mother dress for dinner every night at home.'"

"I think they fancy we are sort of savages," said Eustace. "It makes me feel inclined to be one, and give them a shock."

Dessert the evening before had proved a very dull affair, and the time in the drawing-room afterwards, playing halma with the cousins, was worse. They all four hailed bedtime with thankfulness.

Never before had Eustace and Nesta felt so shut in--so pinned down and overawed. Never, thought Herbert and Brenda, had they met such queer, unresponsive children.

At breakfast they found Becky entirely at home with her keeper, who had a grave kind of way of smiling down upon the small person and Peter.

"You had better come and see the house now," said Herbert immediately after breakfast. "I'm going off rabbit-shooting later."