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A very attractive little dinner was served in the sitting-room and the two girls sat down to it with a feeling as if they were "Playing house." "We're to dine with the grownups after to-night," said Dolly; "new thing for me, 'cause always before I've had my supper in the children's dining-room.
"They called them 'Pures' when I was a boy," he remarked, "but in some places they called 'em 'Reals, just as in some cities they say pink is for boys and blue for girls, and in some the other way round." And don't let any one tell you this question of "Reals" and "Pures" isn't important, for it is, surely as much so as "hazards" and "simple honors" which the grownups are forever discussing.
They're all grownfolks. Childhood: Poor things! How sad! Spirit: But they have a tree and we want to give them gifts which, because they are fairy gifts, will make their best every-day wish come true! Childhood: Yes-they'll think, because they are grownups, they must have useful gifts! But they shall have fairy gifts!
Of course, everyone was deeply interested in the novel appearance of their winter home and, as soon as the twelve o'clock dinner was served, started in to investigate the quarters. The children trailed after the grownups, making their own observations of affairs. The bosses' cabins were among some magnificent trees, about one hundred yards from the main camp.
Brewster had been told where Polly planned to take Eleanor, and she smiled approvingly. A nice luncheon was packed up and placed in the panniers of the burros, and the three grownups stood and watched the two girls ride down the trail to Rainbow Cliff. As they went, Eleanor said: "Did you mention the name of your friends? I forgot, if you have." Polly laughed.
To the small boy looking round the room it seemed as though twenty awful grownups were waiting in a dead silence to eat him up. He rushed upon his answer. "I I'm reading the Anabasis," he said, desperately. The false quantity sent a shock through the room. Nobody laughed, out of sympathy with the boy, who already knew that something dreadful had happened.
I told him, rather hypocritically, what a fine thing he'd done, getting that equipment from Hunters' Hall. I suspect I sounded as though I were mayor of Port Sandor and Hallstock, just seventeen years old, had done something the grownups thought was real smart for a kid. If so, he didn't seem to notice. Somebody connected with the press was being nice to him. I asked him where Steve Ravick was.
They also chose the thirteenth of May, 1897, to spring their first surprise upon their family by arriving together, and had managed to sustain their reputations for surprising the grownups by never permitting a single year to pass without some new outbreak, though it must be admitted that Beverly could certainly claim the greater distinction of the two in that direction.
Beside the road stretched a row of lime-trees, through which glimpses could be caught of a wattled fence, with a meadow with farm buildings on one side of it and a wood on the other the whole bounded by the keeper's hut at the further end of the meadow, The next window to the right overlooked the part of the terrace where the "grownups" of the family used to sit before luncheon.
Moreover, she had always been treated as a reasoning human being invariably trusted; a nice code of honor having been established from the moment the twins could understand the meaning of that fine old word. And that is much earlier in children's lives than a good many grownups believe.
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