Work Text:
It had been decided, when the fuss with hospitals and lawyers and police was threatening to drown Latchetts, that life for Ruth and Jane should be kept as normal as possible. They continued to ride pony and bicycle to the Rectory for lessons, to play the piano, to want new dresses and need new glasses. There were always horses to be exercised and feed bills to be paid, and Eleanor had seemed glad of adherence to the old routine, even when Aunt Bee had decamped to Ireland, taking poor Brat with her, and Great-uncle Charles had been installed with a great collection of exotic statues in the solid stone building.
It was in the study at the Rectory, when the twins were ensconced in lists of Latin nouns, that Jane suddenly asked what indenting was.
“Indenting text on a page, you mean? From the Latin dentatus, having teeth.”
Jane pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “How would you indent for someone, then.”
“An indenture is a contract between two or more people,” he said. “Like a lease or an apprenticeship. Or a period of bonded service. It used to be that contracts would be cut with a wavy line—” With a little effort he stopped himself. Not everyone was as interested in the old ways as himself.
“So it would matter then? If someone thought you were worth indenting for?”
“I think that it would. What’s on your mind, Jane?”
“Oh!” Ruth interrupted. “We got a letter from Brat. I shall never forgive him, never, never, never!”
“And you, Jane?” George asked the less dramatic twin.
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I mean, having a sister is pretty splendid. What’s recognoscere?”
Ruth suddenly looked up and smiled brightly: “Amo, amas, I love a lass, As a cedar tall and slender! Sweet cowslips' grace is her Nominative Case, and she's of the Feminine Gender.”
“Very good, Ruth,” George said drily, and chivvied them both into the proper study of their Cicero.
***
Unusually, George Peck walked outside with the girls as they preparing to leave for their lunch at Latchetts. Jane didn’t seem to mind it, although she was normally staunchly independent.
“It is very splendid, having a sister,” he said, leaning on the paddock railing.
Jane kept her face studiously focused on the saddle she was buckling onto Fourposter. “I mean, if you didn’t have a sister, you might want to do some make believing, mightn’t you? Aunt Bee isn’t my mother, but she does a lot of motherly things. And you’re not my father, Rector, but sometimes you do things a father might, like, like, talking to me now.” Her fair Ashby face was utterly scarlet.
George Peck, who had a professional interest in the more tender feelings of his parishioners, simply nodded. He waited in the sunshine, knowing that words would come when they needed to. Further up the drive, Ruth’s bicycle had revealed a punctured tyre. Ashby-like, the girl had forborne asking for assistance and tucked her skirt into her knickers to methodically repair the tyre with rubber cement and the pump she kept on her bicycle.
With Fourposter saddled, Jane led him up the lane. The two girls, so alike and so different, touched hands and shared a breath of words before departing onto their separate roads.