Sam was standing beside his grandmother, his feet planted firmly on the floor. He glared up at Keely.

“Go out the back with Keely, Sam. There’s a good lad.” Anna turned back to face her busy counter.

Keely smiled at him and held out her hand but Sam continued to stand, stony-faced, dangerously near his busy grandmother. In the kitchen, she could see his older brother, Tom, running around the table. She went through the door. Behind her, there was a yelp and a shout from Anna. Sam shot into the kitchen.

Tom stopped running and looked at her. “Hello.”

“Hello, Tom. What’s this your gran said about homework?”

“I had to draw a diagram but Sam scribbled on it.” His jaw stuck out and he glared past Keely to his little brother.

“I did not,” Sam yelled.

“You did.” Tom took a step towards Sam, who quickly moved behind Keely.

“Did you draw this?” Keely picked up a large piece of paper from the table. It was an intricate plan of some kind of machinery. “Can you explain to me what it is?”

“It’s the milking machine,” Tom said.

“From our farm,” Sam said. “But he didn’t put in any cows.”

“It’s a diagram. It’s not meant to have cows on it.”

“You need cows to get the milk.” Sam put his chubby little hands on his hips and underlined his words with a nod of his head.

“That’s right, Sam,” Keely said. “But Tom is right too,” she added, as Tom’s jaw jutted out again. “He is doing a technical drawing of a piece of equipment. Perhaps you could draw the picture of the cows to go with it.”

When Megan rushed into the kitchen fifteen minutes later, both boys were working on their respective pages. Tom was adding more detail to his diagram and Sam was colouring cows that Keely had helped him to draw. They both burst into excited descriptions of their work.

“Wow. Thanks, Keely.” Megan looked lovingly at her sons as they bent their heads to their work again. She flicked on the kettle. “Mum always has the boys on Tuesday afternoons while I’m at our staff meeting. She’s not usually that busy but some days I think they run riot. You’ve done a wonderful job.”

“They’re both very talented at drawing,” Keely said.

“Do you think so?” Megan made them both a cup of tea and sat down next to Keely, glancing at the boys again. “Tom is always drawing machines. Sometimes they’re the real thing, like the layout of the milking machine, but quite often they are fanciful creations from his head. Sam is more into animals. He likes being out with his dad, helping with the cows, but when he sits still long enough he draws too.”