the twins. "Who told you that?"

"Oh, I've read it somewhere," Herbert said carelessly. "It said
'there are no class distinctions in Colonial life. Men and women
meet as equals.'"

"Then it is rot," said Eustace briefly. "I don't know how you could
believe it. Our friends were all gentlemen and ladies. Australians
are as particular as you are whom they have for friends."

"My good kid," said Herbert aggravatingly, "you don't know
everything, and you haven't been everywhere in the Colonies, you
know. But it really doesn't matter, does it? We were only saying
one doesn't do that sort of thing in England. Come and wash for
tea."

The small passage of arms left neither boy much pleased with the
other. Herbert foresaw that Eustace was likely to be uppish and
cheeky, and would want keeping in his place. Eustace thought
Herbert gave himself airs, and more than justified the criticism he
had long accorded his portrait. He did not look it in real life,
for Herbert was manly and unaffected in appearance. "All the
same," thought Eustace, "he's a silly ass."

Not so much what was said as the tone in which it was said left an
unpleasant impression upon both new-comers. They had planned
together that the very first thing they would do when they arrived
would be to rush all over the house and see everything. Nesta
declared she would not be able to sleep a wink for excitement if
she did not. It had never occurred to them there would be barriers
of any sort. Nothing in their own free lives hitherto had suggested
baize doors through which they "ought not to go."

Somehow those baize doors were suggestive of everything irksome and
disappointing; they were of a piece with all the other changes
which the twins began to feel from the outset.

Before the evening was over Eustace and Nesta had grasped something
of what coming to England really meant: it seemed a case of shut
doors all round--there was no feeling of home about it. Rather,
Eustace reflected bitterly, it was like prison, and all the freedom
of existence was gone. It appeared that here the grown-ups lived in
one part of the house, the children in another. There were certain
times at which the drawing-room or dining-room might be visited,
otherwise the grown-ups must not be interrupted. Becky and Peter
were provided with a sort of jailer, whose business it also was to
give all the young people their meals, and their mother seemed
utterly ungetatable.

Life on the veran