ng carriage toiling up the terribly steep hill that
was almost too much for the horses, fine beasts though they were.

"How strange of him to come in the buggy instead of riding, as he
is alone," said Mrs. Orban.

"Yes," chimed in Nesta, "that was just what I was thinking. Bob
always--always rides, excepting--"

She paused to think whether she had ever seen Bob driving before,
and Eustace finished her sentence for her.

"Excepting when he doesn't," he said.

"Goose," said Nesta tartly.

"Or, more correctly speaking, 'gander,'" said Mr. Orban. "Well, we
needn't squeeze our heads to a pulp trying to guess what we shall
learn from Bob without the slightest trouble in another twenty
minutes at most."

When Bob Cochrane came within earshot he was greeted with such a
chorus of yells that not a single word could he hear of what the
children were trying to say. He grinned back good-humouredly,
waved, and whipping up his horses, came as fast as he could under
the veranda. Then he gathered the meaning of the noise.

"What have you come for, Bob?" shouted the three.

"What have I come for?" he repeated, with his particular laugh
which had a way of setting every one else off laughing too as a
rule. "Well, upon my word, that is a nice polite way to greet a
chap. I had better be off again."

He was big, fair-haired, and gray-eyed, not handsome, but far too
manly for that to matter. As Manuel the Manila boy ran round the
house to take charge of the horses, Bob got down from the buggy and
sprang up the veranda steps in contradiction of his own words. He
was surrounded at the top by the children, all talking at once.
Without an attempt at answering, he picked up Becky, who adored him
with the rest, and passed on to Mr. and Mrs. Orban.

"I apologize for the disorder," Mr. Orban said, "but they have been
working themselves up into a fever of expectation ever since they
first heard the buggy wheels. Seriously though, I hope nothing is
wrong at home. Your mother isn't ill, is she? You haven't come to
fetch the wife as nurse, or anything?"

Such friendly acts as these were the common courtesies of their
simple colonial life. But Bob only laughed now.

"Oh, nothing wrong at all," he replied. "Mater is right enough; it
is only Trix who is the trouble now. She doesn't seem to pick up
after that last bout of fever, and she is so awfully depressed and
lonely, mother thought if you would let me take a couple of the
children--Nest