listless
and disinclined to race about.

After breakfast, when Mr. Orban went back to work, Mrs. Orban gave
the children lessons--the only teaching they had ever had. At
eleven Mr. Orban returned for early dinner.

To our English ideas the routine seems strange; but the Orban
children were used to it, and had no realization of how different
was life in their parents' old home. It did not seem at all funny
even to the twins to have tea at five, and go to bed at half-past
six or seven. They were generally very ready for sleep by then,
after their long, exhausting day.

"I say, father," Eustace said suddenly, after a long meditation
while business was being discussed, "I can stay up to dinner with
mother when you are away--can't I? It will be awfully dull for her
if I don't."

"And me too," said Nesta, who never allowed it to be forgotten
that, being the same age as Eustace, she claimed the same
privileges.

"Rot," said Eustace; "you're only a girl."

"And me too," chimed in Peter.

"Oh, you silly baby," said Eustace impatiently, "what good would
you do?"

Peter's delicate face became scarlet.

"I could play games with mother quite as well as you," he said with
an angry frown.

"Mother doesn't want amusing like that to keep her from being
dull," Eustace declared. "She wants somebody who can talk sensibly
like father, and be grown up."

Nesta gave a little derisive laugh.

"Like father!" she repeated; "that is funny. I suppose you think
you could be just like him. Why don't you ask him to let you smoke
one of his pipes at once?"

"Don't be silly, Nesta," Eustace retorted.

"It's you who are silly," Nesta said, "thinking only boys can be
grown up or of any use."

"When you have quite done snapping each other's heads off,"
interposed their father in his deep, quiet voice, "perhaps you will
allow me to speak. As a matter of fact, the mother thinks of going
to bed with the cocks and hens herself."

"To bed with the cocks and hens!" repeated Peter, with an
expression of blank surprise in his blue eyes.

Now the cocks and hens many of them roosted under the house, which
was built on pillars, and set some distance above the ground. It
was not an attractive spot at any time, for here there also lived
many strange creatures, snakes amongst them.

"Well, not exactly in the henhouse, Peter," said his father, with a
twinkle in his eyes. "I dare say she will sleep as usual in her own
bedroom. I was referring