“So’m I, Jean,” from Rex. “An’ I’ll do that extra copy my very best.”
“Oh, bother the extra copy!” Jean said. “I expect I was cross, too. Every one’s cross but you, Mother, and you’re a miracle! Have you told Jo?”
“No—get her yourself. Be off, both of you!” And Jean was gone like a flash.
“I want you two to remember,” she said, “that Jean and Jo aren’t very old; not so tremendously older than you two. But they are responsible for your lessons, and it isn’t quite playing the game for you to make lesson-time hard for them. Please don’t.” She smiled at the downcast little faces. “Now come along: this room is really too hot. We’ll go out on the south verandah, and you two can cut up French beans for dinner, and I’ll read you a history story. Run and get the beans from Sarah.”
“Mother, could we get the ponies ready first for the girls?”
So when Jean and Jo came out presently, dressed for riding, they found Mrs. Weston in a rocking-chair on the verandah. A table near her bore a tray of glasses and a tall jug full of cool lemonade; and close at hand, under a pepper-tree, Pilot and Punch awaited them, groomed and saddled, and each in charge of a small boy.
“Oh, you little bricks!” Jean said. “That _is_ a let-off—I was looking forward to a blazing walk down the paddock after the ponies. Bless you!” They drank their lemonade thankfully, and set off, while Mrs. Weston and the boys established themselves on the verandah, and the preparation of beans went on contentedly to the accompaniment of “Westward Ho!”
To be on a horse was always a tonic for either Jean or Jo. Even in the blaze of noonday they enjoyed the ride to Barrabri. It was a journey they always liked to make on horseback, since it was then possible to go across country for most of the way, cutting through the corner of the Emu Plains run, and then crossing a wide tract of rough country known as the Barrabri Common. There were gullies in the Common, up and down which it was necessary to scramble, following narrow cattle-tracks; and there were logs to jump, and, in ordinary seasons, watercourses, so that a gallop there presented something between a steeple-chase and an obstacle-race, and was tremendous fun. Now, alas! the watercourses were dry and the galloping ground, instead of being well-grassed, was bare, dusty earth; but still the Common was shady, and more interesting than the long, straight roads, where passing motors made conditions anything but pleasant for other folk.