The words fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the group. Eustace moved involuntarily to Peter's side and put a protecting arm round him, as if he had been struck. The little fellow himself looked utterly bewildered.

"How can you say such a wicked, wicked thing?" exclaimed Nesta in astonishment; "just as if it was poor Peter's fault."

"Well, wasn't it?" demanded Herbert bitterly, his face still hidden. "If Peter hadn't been at the other side of the ship—if Aunt Dorothy had not had to go away and find him—but you all got into the boat and went away and left her!"

"Don't!" exclaimed Eustace sharply. "You don't know what a wreck in the dark is like, or you wouldn't talk like that. There isn't time to know anything. We didn't know Aunt Dorothy was left."

"I should have known," said Herbert, with all the confidence of ignorance, "and I would have stayed and drowned with her."

He broke off short, rose abruptly, and stumbled in a queer, blind way from the room. He could not bear that any one should witness his grief.

Brenda turned a tear-stained face from the window and stared at the trio now standing close together.

"He isn't thinking what he is saying," she said chokily; "but we are so frightfully unhappy about Aunt Dorothy—and this seems to make it worse—I mean that she might so easily have been saved. Of course you didn't really know her, so you can't understand. But ever since our mother died Aunt Dorothy—"

But here Brenda's voice broke utterly, and she, too, hurriedly left the room.

"Well," exclaimed Nesta, "I think it just horrid of them. I shall never, never like them now."

Eustace turned a pair of surprised brown eyes upon her.

"Won't you?" he said wonderingly. "Why, I like them better than I did, ever so much."

"What!" Nesta said, "you like them better for saying a horrid thing like that? To make out it was Peter's fault! Poor little Peter, who was so nearly drowned himself!"

"It wasn't that part I was thinking of," said Eustace, "but just how they loved her. Somehow I never thought of it before. Same way we love mother, I guess; and I don't know what I should have thought if mother had been drowned saving some one else's brother."

Nesta stared at him blankly. There were things about Eustace lately that she did not understand. She knew nothing of Bob's maxim about looking at two sides of a question, so she could see no reason for the strange things he sometimes said, and he was far too reticent to have explained."Well, all I can say is, I wish we had never come," said Nesta for about the twentieth time. "Nothing is nice, and it will be more hateful than ever now they feel like that about Peter. We had better tell mother and father, and ask them to take us away."

"What's that I hear?" said an astonished voice at the door.

The children all jumped and turned round, for there stood their grandfather. They were speechless with dismay; they could not have pictured a worse thing happening.

"What did you say, Nesta?" asked Mr. Chase again, in a tone that made the twins' hearts stand still.

He looked angry, surprised, and very commanding. But how were they to repeat what they had been saying? Nesta remembered they had been warned not to speak of Aunt Dorothy before him. Eustace felt it would be mean and ungenerous to get Herbert into trouble behind his back. But Peter had no such scruples. Dropping his head into his arms on the table, he broke out sobbingly,—

"Herbert says it was me drowned Aunt Dorothy."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Chase incredulously; "he surely never said such a thing? Explain this to me, Eustace, at once."

His tone was so severe that the boy literally shook. He had never seen any one really angry in his life before.

"He didn't say quite that," Eustace said with difficulty; "he only meant it was because of Peter."

"Kindly give me his exact words," Mr. Chase said, still in that awful voice.Eustace closed his thin lips tight, with an expression that meant wild horses would not drag it from him. His grandfather scanned his face closely, then turned to Nesta.

"As Eustace seems to have lost his tongue, I must ask you to tell me what Herbert said in exactly his own words."

Nesta glanced furtively at her twin, but she was angry with Herbert and saw no reason why he should be protected.

"He said," she replied, "if Peter had not been at the other side of the boat, and Aunt Dorothy had not had to go and find him, she wouldn't have been drowned. He said we all went away and left her—"

"How dared he!" Mr. Chase thundered. "I am ashamed that a grandson of mine should have behaved in such a way. Whatever he thought, he had no right to say such a thing."

"He—he was most fearfully unhappy," said Eustace nervously.

"That is no excuse for his making other people so too," Mr. Chase replied. "Eustace, go and tell Herbert to come here at once."

It was a disagreeable errand, and the boy whitened as he turned to obey. Mr. Chase's prompt, old-fashioned methods were something new to him. Fault-finding at home had always been reserved for quiet talks alone with father or mother; they were never made big public affairs like this.

Eustace found Herbert in his own room pacing up and down the floor with his hands in his pockets. He had got control of himself by then, and he turned on his visitor with a look of impatient surprise."What do you want?" he said.

"I'm awfully sorry," Eustace began lamely, "but you've got to come to grandfather. We were talking about what you said, and he came in without our hearing. He made us tell him the rest, and I'm afraid he—he is going to lecture you."

"You—you told tales?" said Herbert scathingly. Without waiting for a reply he marched past his cousin to the schoolroom. Eustace could not bear to follow and see him humiliated. It would be just a little better for him with one person less present, he thought.

"Grandfather was fearfully severe," said Nesta later, when she had found Eustace prowling about like a bear with a sore head alone in the grounds. "So you see it was a beastly thing to say. He said Herbert was no gentleman if he didn't apologize."

"And did he?" asked Eustace shortly.

"He said he was sorry if he hadn't behaved like a gentleman, and it shouldn't occur again. Most awfully stiffly he spoke, just like a grown-up, and then grandfather said he might go."

"And that before you and Peter!" exclaimed Eustace in tones of disgust. "I'm jolly glad I wasn't there; it would have made me feel a low-down black-fellow if Herbert had apologized to me. I don't think Peter behaved like a white man, and I mean to tell him so, too, when I get him to myself."

"Grandfather seems to have taken a fancy to Peter," said Nesta. "He had come up to fetch him when he overheard me. He said Peter had already broken his morning, and he had better have the rest of it and take him a walk. Brenda says she never knew him do such a queer thing before; he is not generally supposed to be fond of children, and that is why we have no meals downstairs."

Every one was surprised at Mr. Chase's sudden partiality for Peter, but the reason was a very simple one. From Peter he could hear more about Miss Chase than from any one else. No tears choked little Peter's voice when he described Aunt Dorothy's first day, or told the story of her quaint mistakes. He quite forgot the sad part of her visit, and lost himself in his stories. The old man led him on from point to point, and learned all that he could of his beloved daughter's stay in Queensland without Peter's guessing what he was really doing.

The little fellow was radiantly happy. They walked about the grounds together, and presently Mr. Chase said Peter must learn to ride—he would teach him himself. Accordingly, out went Peter on a little pony with Mr. Chase at its head, and the riding lessons began.

"It doesn't look as if grandfather thought it was Peter's fault," said Nesta to Eustace; "he seems fonder of him than any one."

If Peter was content, not so the twins. The scene with Herbert had produced a very uncomfortable state of affairs. He no longer played the part of host, but kept out of his cousins' way as much as possible, going out on long expeditions by himself, and never joining the schoolroom party when he could help it.

Nesta thought him detestable, but Eustace had a feeling that Herbert had been very hardly treated in his own home. He could not forget how genuine had been the big fellow's unhappiness over the awful loss of his beloved aunt, and Eustace could have forgiven much more than the outburst against Peter in the face of such real distress. But he had no chance of showing his sympathy; Herbert would have resented any exhibition of sentiment most haughtily. Eustace only felt exceedingly awkward whenever he was with him, and wished with all his heart he could awake to find all these unfortunate English experiences nothing but a bad dream.

Between her loyalty to her brother and the sense of courtesy that bade her look after her cousins, Brenda had a very difficult course to steer; being proud and reserved by nature, she only succeeded in being exceedingly stiff in her attempts at civility to the twins.

"It gets horrider and horrider," Nesta said after two or three days of it.

But the secret treaty not to trouble their mother and disturb her enjoyment held good through everything.

"It will come to an end in a year," Eustace said bravely; "and we couldn't bear it after we got back if we had to remember we had spoiled mother's trip. She has been longing for it such a long time."

Because they saw so comparatively little of their mother, it was always possible to keep their grievances from her; and she was so certain her children must be sharing the pleasures with herself, it never occurred to her to suspect that anything was wrong.

"It wouldn't be us spoiling her trip," Nesta objected; "it would be Brenda's and Herbert's faults, because they are so disagreeable.""It would be because of us," Eustace held out, "and I'll never forgive you if you go whining about it to mother or any one. We can bear it for a year, or we aren't worth anything."

But even Eustace's courage received a check one evening when he and Nesta were called into their mother's room for a talk before she dressed for dinner. Her face was aglow with some pleasant thoughts, yet she was very serious—a strange mixture that immediately struck the twins as portending something very big and out of the way.

"Chicks," she said, drawing them down on each side of her on the sofa, "I have got something very special to say to you to-day—something I scarcely know whether to be most glad or sorry about, for it cuts two ways. It fulfils the ambition of my life for you, and at the same time it costs me my twins."

There was a breathless, expectant silence.

"I think for you the happiness will outweigh the pain," she went on gently, "because it means new interests, new life, everything you must most desire. And, dears, we have to thank grandfather for it; he insists on sending you both to school."

"To school!" shouted the twins simultaneously.

"Yes," Mrs. Orban said, "actually to school. He wishes you to have exactly the same advantages as Brenda and Herbert. Won't it be splendid for you?"

There was dead silence. Mrs. Orban glanced from one grave face to the other. Nesta's was crumpled and bewildered; Eustace's very white, and his expression sadly strained.

"Why, darlings," Mrs. Orban said, "you have always wanted to go to school. Hasn't it nearly made me cry again and again to hear you craving for a thing we could not give you? And now your wishes have been granted as it were by magic, I do believe you are not glad after all."

There was such a ring of disappointment in their mother's voice that even Nesta was roused.

"We've wanted it awfully," stammered Eustace awkwardly, "but we—we didn't think of it coming quite so soon."

"Oh, is that it, you dears?" Mrs. Orban said in a tone between laughter and tears. "I was afraid something much worse was the matter—that you had changed your minds, for instance, or that you didn't like England after all; but of course that couldn't be."

She spoke with such perfect certainty that the twins were dumb; they could think of nothing to say.

"There really is rather a blessing in disguise in your going to school at once, though I can't bear parting with you," Mrs. Orban went on after a little silence. "I shall be quite close to you while you are still feeling strange in your new life; I shall hear all about everything from you by word of mouth in the holidays; and I shall go away next year feeling content that you are settled down, and likely to be nothing but a tiny bit mammy-sick at my departure."

Eustace rubbed his head against her shoulder.

"More than a tiny bit, mummie," he said.

"We needn't think about that yet, though," said Mrs. Orban cheerily; "it is a long way off, with plenty of lovely times between. I only wish father had not to go so soon."

"How soon?" queried Nesta sharply."He says he must be off the end of this month," was the answer; "that is why the school-going has had to be settled so hurriedly. But he has a lovely dream for the future: before you have left school he hopes to be able to come to England for good and settle down here."

"How long would it be before that, mother?" Eustace asked.

"Oh, four or five years, perhaps," said Mrs. Orban.

"But shan't we ever go back to Australia again?" Nesta said with a gulp.

"You won't want to, my dear, once you get used to England," said her mother gently. "Of course it would not be possible for you to come home all that distance for holidays, but you will soon learn not to mind if you have our home-coming to look forward to. Now I will tell you a little about the schools you are going to."

It was easy to listen with apparent interest to this, to put in a question here and there and glean all the information possible. But when the pair left the room Nesta suddenly gripped her brother's arm.

"Eustace," she said huskily, "I—I can't bear it."

"You just must," said the boy sturdily. "I guess there is nothing else to do."

The words were so hopeless that Nesta's tears began to fall thick and fast, and he drew her almost roughly down the passage out of earshot. They reached the picture gallery, and sat down in a deep window-seat overlooking the front drive and the beautiful park beyond. Here Nesta buried her face in her hands and fairly sobbed. Eustace bore it for some seconds, then,—"Look here, old girl," he said, "don't be silly. You'll have a red nose for dessert."

"I don't care," Nesta blurted out.

"But you must care," Eustace said a little impatiently, "because then mother will see you have been crying and find out we're miserable."

"I don't care," sobbed Nesta again. "I can't hide it any more, and I don't want to. I shall ask father to let me go home with him. Nothing will make me stay here with these—these horrid people."

"Nesta!" Eustace exclaimed.

"Well, I can't help it; they are horrid, even if they are our people. I never thought of them being anything like this. And I can't—I won't stay with them."

"Rot," said Eustace angrily. "You know we can't help staying if every one says we are to."

"Then," said Nesta, drawing herself up with a sudden attempt at dignity, "I shall run away."

"Silly!" Eustace exclaimed irritably.

"You'll see it isn't silly when I do it," said Nesta gloomily. "I shall tell father and mother everything about how horrid it is for us, and then if they won't take us home—"

She stopped dramatically, leaving Eustace to fill in the threat for himself.

"You really will tell mother, and spoil everything for her?" he asked in a low, angry tone.

Nesta nodded defiantly.

"Then you are a little beast," said Eustace furiously—"a cruel little beast."

Nesta rose with her nose very high in the air.

"Thank you," she said; "you are most awfully polite. I shall take care not to tell you anything ever again."

Eustace knelt up on the seat, and leant out of the open window into the soft evening air. He was too angry to speak coherently, too bewildered to know what to say. With a toss of her head Nesta turned and left him.

He heard her determined footsteps die away down the gallery, and knew he was meant to understand he had her sincerest disapproval. A few months earlier, he would presently have thrown off his sense of irritation and laughed at Nesta's little airs of importance. To-night he had no heart for the funny side of it. He was vexed to have lost his influence over Nesta, and worried at the thought of what an upset her headstrong course would make. Let alone his mother's disappointment, there would be the grandparents' indignation to reckon with, and Herbert's and Brenda's scornful surprise. They would indeed think them wild Bush children, and be justified in their present attitude of cool unfriendliness.

Yet to be left in these uncongenial surroundings for a space of time that seemed like an eternity to a lad of fourteen; to be forced to remain with these unsympathetic companions for the next four or five years, with no one to turn to and without a home, meant desolation as complete for Eustace as for Nesta.

Away in the park some rooks cawed fussily over the choice of their night quarters. Nearer, a blackbird piped an evening song. They sounded restless and plaintive to the lonely boy, and he hid his face in his hands, covering eyes and ears that he might see nothing, hear nothing. Then into his mind there surged a recollection of the dear old free days at home, never to come again. Right in the midst of every memory stood Bob—his friend Bob whom he would never see again. That was the thought that broke his spirit, and had he been a girl he would have cried; but Eustace shed no tears—this sorrow was beyond them, for a boy.

Something hard suddenly struck him with a sharp tap on the shoulder, and, as he started back in surprise, fell with a clatter back on the gravel below.

Then Eustace gasped, rubbed his eyes, and stared, feeling as if he must suddenly have taken leave of his senses; for there in the drive, his hand poised ready to throw another stone if the first had missed its mark, stood Bob Cochrane.

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