"It is two horses and a four-wheel buggy, and it has only just begun the hill. Let's go in and tell father."

"Oh, what a bother it is so far off!" Nesta exclaimed, with a sigh of impatience. "We shall have to wait ages to find out who it is."

"Who do you think it can be, father?" Peter asked, as Eustace explained what he believed to be coming.

"How should I know?" Mr. Orban answered with mock seriousness.

"It might be a magician with milk-white steeds, or a fairy G.o.dmother, Peter, in a coach made out of pumpkins," said Mrs.

Orban.

"O mother!" Peter cried impatiently, "don't be silly--"

The sentence was never completed; it finished in a howl of mingled pain and rage.

"What on earth is the matter now?" asked Mr. Orban.

"Eustace ki-ki-kicked me," stormed Peter, making a dive at his brother with doubled fists; but his father caught him and held him pinioned.

"I can pretty well guess why," said the big man severely. "If he hadn't, I should have spanked you myself. How dare you say 'don't be silly' to your mother?"

Peter hung his head.

"I didn't mean--" he began.

"I should just think you didn't mean it," said his father. "You'll kindly remember you've no right by birth to be a cad, and it is caddish for a gentleman to speak like that to a lady--whether he is ten years old or a hundred."

"Besides," said Eustace, looking furiously at the small culprit, "mother couldn't be silly if she tried."

Peter's humbled expression changed.

"It wasn't for you to kick me," he spluttered resentfully; "I'll kick you back."

"Oh, if you like to be a donkey," began Eustace in a lordly tone.

"Who was donkey first?" demanded Peter.

"I guess," said Nesta, who was accustomed to these scenes, "the buggy may be in sight at the first bend by now. I'm going to look."

Eustace followed.

"Well, Peter, what comes next?" asked Mr. Orban, without letting go the child's wrists.

Peter looked over his shoulder towards his mother--the blue eyes were swimming with tears, there was a choke in his voice.

"I'm sorry, mummie," he gasped.

The next moment he was clasped in his mother's arms, there was a manful struggle with gathering tears, and then like an arrow from a bow Peter was off to the veranda with every intention of thumping Eustace soundly. But the news that greeted him there put the recent fray right out of his mind.

"It is a buggy, Peter," said Nesta, "and I believe Bob Cochrane is driving it."

Now the Cochranes were the Orbans' nearest neighbours--the family that lived only five miles away. It consisted of a father and mother and this young fellow Robert, who was six-and-twenty, the idol and greatest admiration of the Orban children's hearts. In their eyes there was nothing Bob could not do; his shooting, his driving and riding, his jokes, his ways--everything about him was wonderful. A visit from Bob was a splendid event, no matter what the hour of the day.

Bob had a sister who was about the twins' age, and Nesta's only friend.

"It looks just like Bob's driving," said Eustace.

Then they waited with eager faces, too excited to speak, till suddenly they all cried at once,--

"It is Bob--it is--it is--it is!"

Mr. and Mrs. Orban came out on to the veranda, Becky toddling behind.

"There is no doubt about it," said Mr. Orban as he watched the jolting, b.u.mping carriage toiling up the terribly steep hill that was almost too much for the horses, fine beasts though they were.

"How strange of him to come in the buggy instead of riding, as he is alone," said Mrs. Orban.

"Yes," chimed in Nesta, "that was just what I was thinking. Bob always--always rides, excepting--"

She paused to think whether she had ever seen Bob driving before, and Eustace finished her sentence for her.

"Excepting when he doesn't," he said.

"Goose," said Nesta tartly.

"Or, more correctly speaking, 'gander,'" said Mr. Orban. "Well, we needn't squeeze our heads to a pulp trying to guess what we shall learn from Bob without the slightest trouble in another twenty minutes at most."

When Bob Cochrane came within earshot he was greeted with such a chorus of yells that not a single word could he hear of what the children were trying to say. He grinned back good-humouredly, waved, and whipping up his horses, came as fast as he could under the veranda. Then he gathered the meaning of the noise.

"What have you come for, Bob?" shouted the three.

"What have I come for?" he repeated, with his particular laugh which had a way of setting every one else off laughing too as a rule. "Well, upon my word, that is a nice polite way to greet a chap. I had better be off again."

He was big, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, not handsome, but far too manly for that to matter. As Manuel the Manila boy ran round the house to take charge of the horses, Bob got down from the buggy and sprang up the veranda steps in contradiction of his own words. He was surrounded at the top by the children, all talking at once.

Without an attempt at answering, he picked up Becky, who adored him with the rest, and pa.s.sed on to Mr. and Mrs. Orban.

"I apologize for the disorder," Mr. Orban said, "but they have been working themselves up into a fever of expectation ever since they first heard the buggy wheels. Seriously though, I hope nothing is wrong at home. Your mother isn't ill, is she? You haven't come to fetch the wife as nurse, or anything?"

Such friendly acts as these were the common courtesies of their simple colonial life. But Bob only laughed now.

"Oh, nothing wrong at all," he replied. "Mater is right enough; it is only Trix who is the trouble now. She doesn't seem to pick up after that last bout of fever, and she is so awfully depressed and lonely, mother thought if you would let me take a couple of the children--Nesta and another--back with me for a week, it might brighten the kiddy up. Could you spare them, Mrs. Orban?"

"With pleasure," began Mrs. Orban readily, when Nesta started a sort of war-dance with accompanying cries of delight.

"When you have quite done!" said Bob, with a solemn stare that quelled the disturbance after a moment. "I shan't have an ear to hear with by the time I get home, at this rate. Well, who is the other one to be? You, Eustace?"

Eustace coloured deeply. There was nothing he would have liked better. To go to the Highlands, as the Cochranes' plantation was called, was the greatest pleasure that could have been offered him--the treat had only come his way about twice in his life. It meant so much--rides with Bob, shooting with Bob, long rambles always with his hero.

"I should like to awfully," he said, and stopped, looking beseechingly at his father.