And we always made the cocktails, which was too holy
a rite for any servant. Then, too, we were never allowed anything we
could not take care of ourselves. Of course the cowboys always roped and
saddled our horses, but we had to be able ourselves to go out in the
paddock and rope our horses--"
"What do you mean by _rope_?" Sheldon asked.
"To lariat them, to lasso them. And Dad and Von timed us in the saddling
and made a most rigid examination of the result. It was the same way
with our revolvers and rifles. The house-boys always cleaned them and
greased them; but we had to learn how in order to see that they did it
properly. More than once, at first, one or the other of us had our
rifles taken away for a week just because of a tiny speck of rust. We
had to know how to build fires in the driving rain, too, out of wet wood,
when we camped out, which was the hardest thing of all--except grammar, I
do believe. We learned more from Dad and Von than from the governesses;
Dad taught us French and Von German. We learned both languages passably
well, and we learned them wholly in the saddle or in camp.
"In the cool season the girls used to come down and visit me in Hilo,
where Dad had two houses, one at the beach, or the three of us used to go
down to our place in Puna, and that meant canoes and boats and fishing
and swimming.
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