“You’re going to help in dozens of ways, and most of all by bucking them up,” said Helen firmly. “No worries can be half so bad with you cheery twinses about. You’ve just got to go home and be Knights of the Cheerful Countenance, and that’s something a long way better than money. And don’t forget that bad times don’t last for ever—especially if you make up your mind not to regard them as bad. Now, just uncurl yourselves from those sofa-ends and go off to bed, or Miss Dampier will ask if I’ve already ceased to be Captain!”
[Illustration: “The twins loved their window-seat, and generally read their home-letters in it.” _The Twins of Emu Plains_] [_Page 43_]
They had awakened early, and had lain for an hour discussing their father’s news, and trying to face all that it meant for them. Last night had been a kind of whirl, in which it was difficult to realize anything; but in the quiet of the summer morning it was easier to look steadily at the future. They had re-read Mr. Weston’s letter, with a fresh rush of pity for the pain that lay between its lines. Dimly they realized what it had cost him to write it. It made them ache to make things easier for him.
Helen’s voice broke across a wild vision on the part of Jo, in which she had just discovered a gold-mine in one of the back paddocks, and had so put an end for ever to financial shortage. Jean was as thrilled as she over this dazzling prospect, and they both started violently at the interruption.
Helen came in, very tall and impressive in her kimono, with two long plaits of fair hair.
“I thought you’d be awake,” she said, sitting down on the edge of a bed. “I’ve had a gorgeous idea, and I simply couldn’t wait any longer to tell you about it.”
“Well, you know, you mustn’t be offended. But you’ve got too much sense to be that. You made me think of it by saying you wished you could make some money to help your father.”
“Well, it’s my young brother, Rex. You know I told you the other day that he was rather a problem to us—we don’t know what to do with him when we go to Colombo. Mother has been at her wits’ end for a place to depot him. He had a bad illness eight months ago, and we don’t want to send him to boarding-school until he’s twelve. Not that he isn’t strong enough; but he just wants a bit of extra care—or Mother thinks he does, which comes to the same thing. She would like him to run wild for a year or two, with just enough teaching to keep him from being too much of a dunce.”