her better than any one. Bob didn't
want her to go. Bob asked her to come back."

He broke off short and slammed out of the room. It was as bad to
think of as it had been to bear his mother's helpless loneliness;
for as he could do nothing then for her, he could do nothing now
for Bob.

It was a matter of conjecture between the twins what was likely to
happen next. They really expected that, when Peter was well enough
for the rough journey, they would all go back to the plantation,
and settle down again for ever and ever.

A telegram had been dispatched with the bad news to Mr. and Mrs.
Chase. The reply was an urgent appeal for them all to go on as
first intended.

Leaving everything on the plantation in Bob's care, Mr. Orban
decided to take his wife and family home himself. It would not be
the joyful home-coming they had anticipated; and Mrs. Orban would
need him, he knew.

"We must do what we can for the poor dear old people," Mr. Orban
explained to Bob. "Dorothy was their baby. It is a terrible loss to
them."

"To every one," said Bob briefly.

CHAPTER XVII.

MOTHER'S HOME.

In the length and breadth of England there could hardly have been
found a more lovely little property than Maze Court. There were
larger houses in the neighbourhood, with more extensive grounds;
but as Brenda Dixon stood on the terrace and gazed down towards the
good old English park she felt a real glow of pride and pleasure in
belonging to such a place. It was the sort of feeling she had
whenever she brought a new school friend home for the holidays.

Beside her stood Herbert--long, lean, and very gentlemanly in his
flannels. It was one of his sister's great joys that he always
looked a gentleman in everything.

She was a striking-looking girl herself, with features a little too
pronounced for accurate beauty; but this very fault had the effect
of making her handsome. She had little personal vanity--mere
features she cared nothing for--but pride of birth and of the old
home were deeply rooted in her.

"I think Nesta and Eustace ought to be surprised," she was
thinking; "they won't have seen anything like it. It will seem so
big and splendid to them after the kind of life they have had."

Brenda was never very sure how to picture the Orbans' existence in
Queensland. There was a touch of pettiness about it--a feeling of
poverty and "hugger-muggerness," if one may coin such a word. The
thought of her uncle going daily