“Well—you’ll see. And there are ever so many things, and all perfectly new. But nothing very swagger: our poor old Billy won’t feel that he’s too much in the shade.”
“I was afraid when we met him that Billy would be hopelessly out of it,” said Jo. “He was such a dreadfully superior young man. And he still shows signs of being superior—but not as much. And they went off to bed arm in arm—which was far more than I had dared to hope for, the very first night.”
“There’s nothing like a good, honest fight,” said her father, laughing. “If you had seen those urchins in the orchard, going at each other, hammer and tongs, you’d have known that there was no question of superiority about either of them. After all, Rex’s polish is only skin-deep; there’s normal small boy under it. And one small boy is very like another.”
“I’m rather troubled about one thing,” Jean said. “It doesn’t seem to me that Rex can possibly keep his polish up here. Billy will certainly rub it off, even if Jo and I don’t. It just couldn’t exist in a place like Emu Plains.”
“It could not,” her father nodded agreement.
“Well—when the Foresters come back from Colombo and find only unpolished Rex—it sounds rather like unpolished rice—do you think they’ll be horrified? For all we know Mrs. Forester has spent nine laborious years in putting that polish on.”
“That’s an awful idea!” said Jo anxiously.
“Only, Helen isn’t a bit polished,” Jean said. “She’s almost rugged at times, especially when you duck her in the baths. Of course her manners are lovely when she wants them to be; but then every Captain of the School has to have lovely manners for use if required—not as a habit. Rex’s polish isn’t like that. He fairly wallows in it.”
“He won’t wallow long,” said Mr. Weston. “Not if I know Billy.”
“She will not,” said Mrs. Weston, coming into the discussion with a note of decision in her clear voice. “If Mrs. Forester finds that much-too-pretty little boy grown into a brown, noisy, healthy ruffian like Billy, with horny hands and tough muscles, she won’t worry one little bit as to where his polish has gone. The mother who sent her son up here with scout suits and whipcord breeches doesn’t want him kept in cotton-wool. We can’t be always sure of making no mistakes, twinses dear: but I think if we have to decide between living up to the polish or the breeches, it will certainly be best to let the polish go. Elaine Forester won’t miss it after her boy has been for a year on Emu Plains!”