“Think!” said the artful one. “You needn’t even ask your father and mother—they’d never turn us down, once you’d made the arrangement. Such a chance for you to help them—to say nothing of us! Why, it would mean that you could keep old Sarah—and think what a difference that would make! Even if you aren’t sixteen you can manage it.”
The twins drew a long breath. It was a dazzling prospect. Hard times with Sarah seemed only a circumstance to hard times without that rock of defence.
“I wonder—I wonder if Father would be awfully wild!” Jo pondered.
“Not he—once it was done. Your father has too much sense: how do you think _he_ feels about parting Mrs. Weston from Sarah?”
“Why, I guess it’s a nightmare to him,” said Jo.
“Well, you’ve got it in your power to spare him that, at any rate.”
“Oh, Jo, let’s do it!” she begged. “It’s only silly pride if we don’t, as Helen says. And we’ll do our level best to give him a good time and look after him. It will be lovely for Billy, too—he’s always wanted a mate.”
“It would be altogether lovely,” said Jo,—“if only horrid old money didn’t come into it. But I agree with you—we’d be stupid not to take such a chance.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” said Helen. “Mother will feel simply years younger. Now look here, twinses: I’m to meet her in town this afternoon, so you had better write her a letter, and then she and I can fix everything up.”
“All right,” said Jo. “Dig out a dictionary, will you, Jean?—we mustn’t spoil our chances by putting in bad spelling!”
“If you spelt every other word wrong it wouldn’t worry Mother just now,” Helen said, laughing. “It’s mothering and a jolly home she wants for Rex, not higher flights of knowledge!”
“There are no higher flights about my spelling!” said Jo, with decision. “You ask Miss Allpress!”
Whereupon the twins politely hinted that solitude would be helpful to them, and applied themselves to composition; the result being a document over which Mrs. Forester smiled in a Melbourne tea-room that afternoon.
“Helen says you want a home for Rex, and she thinks you would let him come to us. We think it is perfectly awful to take money for having him, which we would love to do without any money at all, but Helen says it must not be. So, as Father is having hard times with the drought and other things, and we must leave school and teach Billy, what would you think about trusting Rex to us? Mother and Father would act as parents to him, we are sure, and we would try to make him happy.” (“I _like_ the division of duties!” murmured Mrs. Forester.) “We do not know if we are any good at teaching, but we are up to Junior Public work, and we are going to teach Billy, so he and Rex could have lessons together. We would do our best, and each of us could teach the subjects she was best at; as, for instance, I cannot do French at all, while Jean is a whale at it, and she hates mathematics, which I love. We can both teach him riding, swimming, and gym. work, and see that he baths himself thoroughly, and cleans his teeth. Mother and Father do not know anything about our proposal, and we know they will hate taking money, so we thought we would fix it up without them, if you approve, which Helen says she thinks you will. We would give him the best time we could, if you let us have him, and take tremendous care of him, and Billy would love a mate. Wishing you a happy Christmas, we are,