when we've waited and waited, and stayed away for 'er,
she'll go and leave it all to some Old Cats' 'Ome or Old Hens' Roost,
or some other beastly charity. I don't trust 'er--'any woman that 'olds
on to life the way she does--'er with one foot in the grave, and 'er
will all made and everything ready."

"Well, she can't last always," Reginald declared, holding firmly to
this one bit of comfort.

The next news they got from Bournemouth was positively alarming! She
was getting better. Then the twins lost hope entirely and decided to
treat Aunt Patience as one already dead--figuratively speaking, to turn
her picture to the wall.

"Let her live as long as she likes," Reginald declared, "if she's so
jolly keen on it!"

When they decided to trust no more to the deceitfulness of woman they
turned to another quarter for help, for they were, at this time,
"uncommonly low in funds."

It was Randolph who got the idea, one day when he was sitting on the
plow handle lighting his pipe.

"Wot's the matter with us gettin' out Fred for our farm pupil? He's got
some money--they say he married a rich man's daughter--and we've got
the experience!"

"He's only a 'alf-brother!" said Reginald, at last, reflectively.

"That don't matter one bit to me," declared Randolph, generously, "I'll
treat him just the same as I would you!"

Reginald shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

"What about his missus?" asked Reginald, after a silence.

"She can come," Randolph said, magnanimously. "We'll build a piece to
the house."

The more they talked about it the more enthusiastic they became. Under
the glow of this new project they felt they could hurl contempt on Aunt
Patience and her unnatural hold on life.

"I don't know but what I would rather take 'elp from the livin' than
the dead, anyway," Reginald said, virtuously, that night before they
went to bed.

"They're more h'apt to ask it back, just the same," objected Randolph.

"I was just goin' to say," Reginald began again, "that I'd just as soon
take 'elp from the livin' as the dead, especially when there ain't no
dead!"

They began at once to write letters to their long-neglected brother
Fred, enthusiastically setting forth the charms of this new country.
They dwelt on the freedom of the life, the abundance of game, and the
view! They made a great deal of the view, and certainly there was
nothing to obstruct it, for the prairie lay a dead level for ten miles
north of them, only dott