The Twins of Emu Plains

THE final struggle in the tennis match between Merriwa and Kooringal schools was raging, and the very air about the court at Merriwa was vibrant with excitement. The western sid...

“Well, if I do, you’ll get no supper,” said the caller, not ceasing to be energetic. “Why, no self-respecting person goes to sleep at all before a supper, and here you are, snor...

The twins had sought Helen Forester in her study, finding her in the throes of packing up. In itself this was a distressing sight, and induced seriousness. Every one had been pr...

THE twins did not lose a moment. They edged through the crowd of girls, dodged one or two laughing queries about their bathe, and, gaining the staircase, fled up to their eyrie...

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...

“I never heard such nonsense,” Mrs. Weston said. “If every one in Australia who had had bad luck on top of a drought were to go about feeling ashamed, a nice place Australia wou...

MOTHER was at the gate to meet them—a slender, pretty woman, looking not so much older than her tall daughters. She disappeared under their onslaught, emerging from a bear’s hug...

REX FORESTER arrived three days after Christmas. The twins drove in to meet him, well charged with pity. A little boy of nine, whose family has just sailed in a body for Colombo...

“It has been sufficiently exhausting to act as the parent of low-grade twins without beginning to live up to them as high-grade pupil-teachers,” said her father, laughing. “Howe...

WITH the first days of January the twins’ programme may be said to have got fairly into its stride. It worked smoothly enough. An alarum-clock, placed on an empty kerosene-tin b...

AFTER that, lessons went more easily, because both teachers and pupil understood each other better. Rex had a good deal of the quick intuition and clear brain that had made his...

MOTHER had gone to Melbourne, much against her will, to see the dentist—that useful person who secures for many Bush mothers their only chance of a holiday to the city. But on t...

“Well, she’s better,” Jean answered, turning from a pan of fried potatoes. “She says the neuralgia has quite gone. But you can see that she has had an awful night—the poor old s...

“Well, there’s no one to go with us,” Billy said. “The Lawrences are coming out to play tennis, and _we_ can’t play when big people are there. You know it’s always a case of pic...

‟JUST as close a shave as anything could be,” John Weston said. “It came into our paddock and burned about a chain of fencing: and then the wind changed. It had been chopping ab...

“Don’t care if you don’t believe it!” said Rex, under his breath: not so low, however, but Jean caught the words. She looked at him steadily, and the small boy had the grace to...

“No—and we mustn’t take what will be noticed too much,” Jean said. “Here’s a tin of sheep’s tongue, and another of sardines.” She rummaged among the spare foodstuffs that are to...

JOHN WESTON slept but little that night. It was as though he were afraid to close his eyes for fear the rain might stop. Too well he knew that the breaking of the drought could...