da 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 t