[Cover Illustration]
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MARY GRANT BRUCE’S
VERY POPULAR STORIES
Published by
WARD, LOCK & CO., LTD.
Uniform with this volume.
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A LITTLE BUSH MAID
TIMOTHY IN BUSHLAND
MATES AT BILLABONG
FROM BILLABONG TO LONDON
GLEN EYRE
NORAH OF BILLABONG
GRAY’S HOLLOW
JIM AND WALLY
’POSSUM
DICK
DICK LESTER OF KURRAJONG
BACK TO BILLABONG
THE STONE AXE OF BURKAMUKK
BILLABONG’S DAUGHTER
THE HOUSE OF THE EAGLES
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[Illustration: “‘It’s all right,’ Jean assured him. ‘No one knows you are
here.’”
(Page 233.)
_The Twins of Emu Plains_] [_Frontispiece_]
THE TWINS
OF EMU PLAINS
BY
MARY GRANT BRUCE
ILLUSTRATED
W A R D , L O C K & C O . , L I M I T E D
LONDON AND MELBOURNE
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE PLEASANT MADNESS OF THE TWINS. 7
II MIDNIGHT. . . . . . 17
III THE LAST DAYS OF TERM. . . 29
IV A LETTER FROM HOME. . . . 43
V HELEN HAS AN IDEA. . . . 54
VI EMU PLAINS. . . . . 71
VII THE TWINS’ SURPRISE-PACKET. . 83
VIII GETTING ON TERMS. . . . 93
IX THE PROGRAMME. . . . . 105
X MIXED INSTRUCTIONS. . . . 114
XI THE PATH OF KNOWLEDGE. . . 131
XII RESPONSIBILITIES. . . . 146
XIII A JERSEY BULL. . . . . 163
XIV GENTLEMEN ADVENTURERS. . . 180
XV SUNDAY AFTERNOON. . . . 198
XVI THE TWINS TAKE A HOLIDAY. . . 210
XVII THE TURNING OF THE LONG LANE. . 232
XVIII CONCLUSION. . . . . 244
CHAPTER I
THE PLEASANT MADNESS OF THE TWINS
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 side, which gave the best view,
without the sun in one’s eyes, was, by traditional use, given over to
the supporters of the visiting team; and there the Kooringals massed in
a solid phalanx, under their green and mauve flag, and screamed as one
individual at the doughty strokes of their champions. Opposite them were
the long lines of the Merriwiggians, with dark-blue favours that matched
their silken banner, and with voices no less jubilant when a well-placed
School stroke got past the said champions’ defence. At either end of the
court the seats of the mighty bore the impressive forms of “teachers,
parents, and guardians”; some watching the play as eagerly as any Fourth
Form youngster, while others were so lost to a sense of their
opportunities as to while away the time in discussing the latest Russian
pianist or the result of the State Elections. Afternoon tea had already
occurred; even now, in the pavilion, could be heard the clatter of
crockery as the maids packed up—a faint and far-away sound, that
contrasted oddly with the simmering excitement round the tennis-court.
The game had been very level, but, on the whole, Kooringal felt its star
in the ascendant. So far, indeed, the match was a tie, but there was
good cause for the visitors’ comfortable feeling of security, for the
Merriwa pair for the finals were not seriously considered as champions.
Their place in the team was due only to the fact that Merriwa was short
of tennis players. Now they had to meet the Kooringal cracks, a year
older, and winners on many a hard-foughten field. It was small wonder if
the Merriwiggians settled themselves to watch the finals with hearts
inclined to sink.
They felt rather worse at the end of the first sett, and through their
ranks ran a feeling of “I-told-you-so!” Jean and Josephine Weston, their
players, had shown from the first that they were oppressed by the
magnitude of their task. They played carefully, without any dash, afraid
to take any liberties with the tall pair across the net, who seemed so
huge and so confident. By luck, rather than by play, they had managed to
win four games to six: that it was luck no one knew more clearly than
Jean and Jo. They exchanged depressed looks when “Game and sett!” was
called at the end. It had been a “love” game, thanks to the appalling
series of balls Eva Severne had served: unplayable, malevolent streaks
of grey light, which had merely touched the ground in the extreme
corners of their courts before disappearing into the landscape. Jean and
Jo had “swiped” at them unavailingly; useful exercise, but in no way
affecting the balls.
“We’re not going to be even amusement to them!” Jean remarked, as they
crossed over to change ends. “Isn’t it perfectly awful, Jo! And I never
tried so hard in my life!”
“Neither did I,” Jo answered. “And, of course, the more I try, the worse
I play. Look here, Jean, it isn’t a bit of use trying—to play a careful
game, I mean. This isn’t a time to be careful. I’m going to be
desperate!”
“Oh, are you?” Jean met her twin’s eyes with an answering flash. “Well,
I suppose the only thing is to be desperate too. We’ll just slog.”
“Right! And there’s another thing—Mona Burton isn’t playing nearly as
well as that terrible Severne girl. She’s muffed a good few balls.”
“That’s why the sett was 6-4!” said Jean drily. “Well, we’ll give her
all we can. Your serve, Jo—slog them in!”
Jo slogged accordingly, and had the satisfaction of seeing her first
ball hit the top of the net. In ordinary moments this would have induced
a careful second service, and Eva Severne moved up closer to the net in
anticipation. Instead, Jo set her teeth and sent the second ball with
even more fervour than the first. It went true, and Eva was never even
near it.
The twins grinned at each other as they crossed.
“Go on being desperate!” Jean said. “It pays!”
Which may or may not have been why within two minutes the Merriwiggians
were tumultuously applauding a “love” game as emphatic as that which
only a few moments earlier had been delightedly acclaimed by the ranks
of Kooringal!
The sett ran to a swift and exciting conclusion. The twins’ play was
occasionally erratic, but never for a moment dull: they had decided upon
ways of desperation, and they fled wildly from one place to another,
hitting at everything, possible or impossible; occasionally achieving
what seemed to be impossible, by reason of amazing agility. They were a
lithe and active pair, built on economical lines that suggested that
wire and whipcord were largely used in their composition. Certainly,
both whipcord and wire were in evidence in their strokes. There was no
special science in their method, but it was good, hard-hitting play; and
as they always played together, they knew exactly what to expect of each
other, and never overlapped.
The Kooringal pair were taken aback. The first sett had made them feel
confident of an easy victory. Mona Burton knew that she was not playing
well, but then Eva seemed to be on her usual superb pinnacle of
self-confidence, and would be sure to pull them through. She had not
worried, even when she had “muffed” a few strokes. But in the second
sett the small pair of Merriwiggians seemed to be transformed into a
couple of inspired imps, who bounded and twisted and ran—_how_ they
ran, thought Mona, who was inclined to plumpness, and preferred a game
conducted mainly from the back line! Nothing came amiss to them, and
they served balls that seemed to Mona to be compounded of quicksilver
and electricity. Even the redoubtable Eva was nonplussed; the opening
games had not prepared her for anything like this. Her own play showed
distinct signs of being “rattled”: she missed strokes that would
ordinarily have been easy to her, and her service lost a good deal of
its “bite.” Silence—dismayed silence—fell upon the ranks of Kooringal,
while among the Merriwiggians rapture and amazement mounted until the
sett came to a triumphant conclusion at 6-3!
“Can you make it last?” Helen Forester, the Merriwa captain, managed to
whisper to Jean, as the twins changed ends with their opponents.
Jean gave a rapturous gurgle.
“_I_ don’t know,” she answered. “We’re both quite mad, of course. It
would be an awful lark, if only it weren’t so terrible!” She caught her
twin’s eye and they grinned at each other. In Jo’s glance there was
something of a look familiar to Jean: she had seen it often when they
were mustering young cattle with their father, and an excited bullock
had needed determination and hard riding to bring him round to the main
mob. The twins loved such jobs, and Jo used to gallop after a fugitive
with her jaw set in a firm line, but her eyes alight with laughter. So
she looked now: the immaculate, white-clad girls in the other court
might have been a pair of unruly steers, bent on breaking away, and the
racquet she swung loosely, a stock-whip ready for use, as she waited for
Eva’s service. The familiar look gave Jean fresh courage. Terrible the
game might be, but it was certainly also a lark!
Possibly, had they been girls bred to games, with years of school-life
behind them, and the importance of tennis tournaments ground into their
beings by tradition and experience, the twins might have been unable to
tackle that last sett with the cheery courage that somehow communicated
itself to the tense onlookers. They would have been crushed by the
importance of their task; and in that case they would most certainly
have gone under. But Jean and Jo Weston had had only a year of a
Melbourne school, and behind that lay a lifetime of the lonely country,
where games were mere incidents, and where recreation meant, for the
most part, sharing their father’s work on the station. Even after a year
of school, tennis—even tournament tennis—was only a game to the twins.
They had taken to it with quick natural aptitude, and being unusually
tough and wiry, with eye and hand trained by the use of stock-whip and
rifle, they had soon found themselves in the front rank, with the
consequent responsibility of match play. That, if they could but adopt
the view-point of their school-mates, was rather terrible. Jean and Jo
obediently echoed them, and said it was terrible. But at the back of
their minds was the conviction that it was only a game after all.
They had played the first sett with a due sense of responsibility. In
the second, they had cast responsibility to the winds, and had been
merely desperate. It had paid, and there was no question as to which
method was the more enjoyable. Therefore, there seemed to the twins no
reason why they should not continue to be cheerfully insane. They did
better when they were insane, and it was so very much more pleasant!
Eva Severne made a desperate effort to recapture the Kooringal lead in
that last sett. There were times when she played so brilliantly that no
mere insanity on the part of the twins could enable them to meet her
balls. But Mona Burton was manifestly weighed down by the madness of the
flitting pair opposite, who never by any chance were where you might
expect them to be, and who seemed capable of acrobatic feats worthy of a
circus. They never looked worried; in fact, they laughed a great deal,
until the spectators caught the infection, and rocked with laughter
themselves. It was a delirious game, full of amazing incidents, in which
the inferior players scored simply by desperate hitting and by taking
chances that no one would, in sober moments, have dreamed of taking.
Nine times out of ten, the system—if system it could be called—would
have failed. But this happened to be the tenth time. Luck held, and
impossibilities happened. Finally, a smashing half-volley from Eva, on
its way to annihilate Jo, was intercepted by Jean, who executed a leap
into mid-air only comparable to the jump of a performing flea! The ball
seemed to wobble in the air for a moment, and then dropped weakly on the
far side of the net. Eva and Mona, rushing madly to reach it, collided
violently; the spent ball dropped: and, amid a gale of laughter from all
round the court, and a crescendo of delirium from the ranks of Merriwa,
the sett ended in victory for the twins at 6-3!
Jean and Jo, laughing and half-apologetic, shook hands with their
opponents.
“Of course, it’s the most amazing luck!” Jean said. “You’re simply miles
beyond us, really: we haven’t a scrap of science.”
“I don’t believe you have,” said Eva, regarding them with an amazed air.
“But I hope we’ll meet some one scientific next time, that’s all! You’re
so hopelessly unexpected!”
“The win was unexpected, at any rate,” Jo laughed. “We looked on
ourselves as utterly beaten at the end of the first sett, so we just
went Berserk. It was great fun!”
“Fun—to you!” Mona Burton was still panting. “I feel as if I should
never get my breath again. Never—never—never did I play at such a
rate! Do you ever get tired, you two wild things?”
“Oh, not often,” Jo answered. “And it was far too exciting to think of
getting tired.” Then suddenly they were swamped in a wild surge of
school-fellows, their hands pumped, their backs patted. Delighted
juniors bore their blazers, holding them proudly while they donned them,
and uttering incoherent murmurs of joy. Amidst the general delirium two
majestic figures detached themselves from the throng at the far end of
the court. The crowd melted like magic at their approach, and presently
Jean and Jo, blushing like poppies, found themselves receiving the
dignified congratulations of the two principals.
“A most interesting game—and a truly energetic one!” said Miss
Atchison, of Kooringal, in the measured tones that made her least remark
seem like an anthem. “Miss Dampier tells me you are twins—and not
sixteen yet. You should play well when you are a year older.”
“Oh, but it was only luck,” the twins assured her. “You wouldn’t really
call our play tennis!”
“Well, it was too good for us!” said Eva Severne, laughing. Then Miss
Atchison and Miss Dampier drifted away into the throng of parents and
visitors, who were beginning to think of trams and motors, and the girls
closed once more round the twins. Every one discussed points of the
play, and most people seemed to concur in the view that the twins were
mad. But it was, as Helen Forester said, a pleasant madness.
The Kooringal boarders formed up presently, and marched away, still
bearing their banner proudly.
“Just you wait until next year!” said Eva Severne, shaking a threatening
fist merrily at the twins.
“Yes, next year!” echoed Mona. “I shall have left then, but I hope we
shall have somebody less fat to meet you.” She sighed. “Certainly, no
one who plays against you should be fat!”
“We may be fat ourselves!” said the twins—a remark greeted with
derisive cheers. “At any rate we’ll work up ever so much science.”
“Sure you’ll be here next year?” asked a Kooringal girl.
“Oh, certain. Two more years of school, at least—perhaps three. So
there’s lots of tennis ahead,” Jo uttered, happily. “Next year we must
take it up in earnest and learn all the technical part. Then I suppose
we’ll find out why your balls go straight through one’s racquet, Eva!”
“I wish they had done so a bit more to-day!” said Eva ruefully. “Well,
it’s time we took our battered remnant to the tram. Good-bye—and it was
a very jolly game, even if you did beat us!”
The Merriwiggians escorted them to the gate, and they marched down the
road, in excellent formation for “battered remnants.” Then the school
closed round the Weston twins, and, lifting them shoulder-high, carried
them up the path to the house, asserting loudly and more or less
tunefully, that they were jolly good fellows. The sudden appearance at a
window of Miss Dampier disorganized the procession, and those
responsible for the twins dropped them. Miss Dampier disappeared as
quickly as she had come. She was that pearl among women, a headmistress
who realized that teachers should occasionally have no official
existence.
Jean and Jo picked themselves up, remarking that the consequences of
winning a match seemed to be more strenuous than the game itself! They
turned scared eyes on an attempt to revive the procession, and, ducking
under admiring arms, fled to their dormitory. No one was there, and they
sat down and looked at each other. In each look there was a sudden
access of respect.
“Well, I didn’t think you had it in you!” remarked Jean.
“I didn’t either,” responded Jo.