“You would not say that if once you really knew them.”

“Then I wish you would teach me to know them.”

“Here are the books all about us, and you can read, miss?”

“Ah, but I can’t read as you read! I can shoot and fish and run and ride and swim, and all those kinds of things. I think I could even shoe a horse if someone would give me a lesson or two.”

“I would, with pleasure, miss.”

“Oh, thank you. That will be wonderful. But how is it you can do everything?”

“I can only do one or two things. I can shoe a horse, but I scarcely know anything about riding them.”

“Teach me to shoe Miss Brown, and I will teach you to ride her. How is your hand?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“I would rather learn to read though—the right way, I mean.”

“That would be better than shoeing Miss Brown. But I will teach you both, if you care to learn.”

“Thank you, indeed! When shall we begin?”

“Whenever you like.”

“Now?”

“I can’t before six o’clock. I must first do what I am paid to do. What kind of reading do you like best?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Where do you live?” asked Richard, all the time busy with the quarto under his fingers.

“Don’t you know?”

“I don’t even know who you are, miss.”

“I am Barbara Wylder. I live at Wylder Hall, a few miles from here. My father was the third son and never expected to have the Hall. He went to New Zealand and married my mother, and made a fortune—at least so people say. He never tells me anything. They don’t care much for me. They would rather have had a boy!”

“Have you any brothers?”

“I have one,” she answered. “I had two, but my mother’s favourite is gone, and my father’s is left, and mama can’t get over it. They were twins, but they did not love each other. How could they? My father and mother don’t love each other, so each loved one of the twins and hated the other.”

She mentioned the fact with a strange nonchalance—as if it were a thing that could not be helped and needed no more wondering at than a rainy day. Yet the sigh which followed her words indicated trouble because of it.

Richard held his peace, astonished both that a lady should talk to him in such an easy way, and that she should tell him such sad family secrets. But she seemed quite unaware of doing anything strange, and after a brief pause resumed.

“They were both fine children, but as the boys grew mother and father quarrelled more and more about them. Each was determined and obstinate.”

“Were the twins older or younger than you?” asked Richard.

“They were three years younger than me. But when I look back it seems as if I had been born into the bickering. When my father’s next older brother fell ill, and there seemed a possibility of his succeeding to the property, the thing grew worse than ever—then it became which of them should be his heir. No one knew which was the elder. So from the first the boys understood that they were enemies, and acted accordingly. Each always wanted everything for himself. They were both kind to me. But there was always strife. When it came to blows, as it often did, I jumped on a horse and went away. Nobody ever missed me.”