The Terrible Twins

by Edgar Jepson · English · Gutenberg #19043 · 369,136 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Terrible Twins

Author: Edgar Jepson

Illustrator: Hanson Booth

Release date: August 14, 2006 [eBook #19043]
Most recently updated: May 26, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19043

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TERRIBLE TWINS ***

The Terrible Twins

by Edgar Jepson

Author of
The Admirable Tinker, Pollyooly, etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HANSON BOOTH

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Contents

CHAPTER I. AND CAPTAIN BASTER
CHAPTER II. GUARDIAN ANGELS
CHAPTER III. AND THE CATS' HOME
CHAPTER IV. AND THE VISIT OF INSPECTION
CHAPTER V. AND THE SACRED BIRD
CHAPTER VI. AND THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
CHAPTER VII. AND PRINGLE'S POND
CHAPTER VIII. AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES
CHAPTER IX. AND THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM
CHAPTER X. AND THE ENTERTAINMENT OF ROYALTY
CHAPTER XI. AND THE UNREST CURE
CHAPTER XII. AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING FISHING
CHAPTER XIII. AND AN APOLOGY
CHAPTER XIV. AND THE SOUND OF WEDDING BELLS

[Illustration: “Cats for the cats’ home!” said Sir Maurice Falconer.]

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Cats for the cats’ home!” said Sir Maurice Falconer.
“This is different,” she said.
We are avenged.
She was almost sorry when they came at last to the foot of the knoll.
The Archduke bellowed, “Zerbst! Zerbst! Zerbst!”
Sir James turned and found himself looking into the deep brown eyes of a very pretty woman.

THE TERRIBLE TWINS

CHAPTER I
AND CAPTAIN BASTER

For all that their voices rang high and hot, the Twins were really
discussing the question who had hit Stubb’s bull-terrier with the
greatest number of stones, in the most amicable spirit. It was indeed a
nice question and hard to decide since both of them could throw stones
quicker, straighter and harder than any one of their size and weight
for miles and miles round; and they had thrown some fifty at the
bull-terrier before they had convinced that dense, but irritated,
quadruped that his master’s interests did not really demand his
presence in the orchard; and of these some thirty had hit him. Violet
Anastasia Dangerfield, who always took the most favorable view of her
experience, claimed twenty hits out of a possible thirty; Hyacinth
Wolfram Dangerfield, in a very proper spirit, had at once claimed the
same number; and both of them were defending their claims with loud
vehemence, because if you were not loudly vehement, your claim lapsed.

Suddenly Hyacinth Wolfram, as usual, closed the discussion; he said
firmly, “I tell you what: we both hit that dog the same number of
times.”

So saying, he swung round the rude calico bag, bulging with booty,
which hung from his shoulders, and took from it two Ribston pippins.

“Perhaps we did,” said Anastasia amiably. They went swiftly down the
road, munching in a peaceful silence.

It had been an odd whim of nature to make the Twins so utterly unlike.
No stranger ever took Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, so dark-eyed,
dark-haired, dark-skinned, of so rich a coloring, so changeful and
piquant a face, for the cousin, much less for the twin-sister, of
Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield, so fair-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed,
on whose firmly chiseled features rested so perpetual, so contrasting a
serenity. But it was a whim of man, of their wicked uncle Sir Maurice
Falconer, that had robbed them of their pretty names. He had named
Violet “Erebus” because, he said,

She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry
spheres:

and he had forthwith named Hyacinth the “Terror” because, he said, the
ill-fated Sir John Franklin had made the Terror the eternal companion
of Erebus.

Erebus and the Terror they became. Even their mother never called them
by their proper pretty names save in moments of the severest
displeasure.

“They’re good apples,” said the Terror presently, as he threw away the
core of his third and took two more from the bag.

“They are,” said Erebus in a grateful tone—“worth all the trouble we
had with that dog.”

“We’d have cleared him out of the orchard in half the time, if we’d had
our catapults and bullets. It was hard luck being made to promise never
to use catapults again,” said the Terror sadly.

“All that fuss about a little lead from the silly old belfry gutter!”
said Erebus bitterly. could easily have put slates in the place of the
sheet of lead we took,” said the Terror with equal bitterness.

“Why can’t they leave us alone? It quite spoils the country not to have
catapults,” said Erebus, gazing with mournful eyes on the rich autumn
scene through which they moved.

The Twins had several grievances against their elders; but the loss of
their catapults was the bitterest. They had used those weapons to
enrich the simple diet which was all their mother’s slender means
allowed them; on fortunate days they had enriched it in defiance of the
game laws. Keepers and farmers had made no secret of their suspicions
that this was the case: but the careful Twins never afforded them the
pleasure of adducing evidence in support of those suspicions. Then a
heavy thunderstorm revealed the fact that they had removed a sheet of
lead, which they had regarded as otiose, from the belfry gutter, to
cast it into bullets for their catapults; a consensus of the public
opinion of Little Deeping had demanded that they should be deprived of
them; and their mother, yielding to the

“As if belfries wanted lead gutters. They could easily have put slates
in the place of the sheet of lead we took,” said the Terror with equal
bitterness.

“Why can’t they leave us alone? It quite spoils the country not to have
catapults,” said Erebus, gazing with mournful eyes on the rich autumn
scene through which they moved.

The Twins always obeyed their mother; but they resented bitterly the
action of Little Deeping. It was, indeed, an ungrateful place, since
their exploits afforded its old ladies much of the carping conversation
they loved. In a bitter and vindictive spirit the Twins set themselves
to become the finest stone-throwers who ever graced a countryside; and
since they had every natural aptitude in the way of muscle and keenness
of eye, they were well on their way to realize their ambition. There
may, indeed, have been northern boys of thirteen who could outthrow the
Terror, but not a girl in England could throw a stone straighter or
harder than Erebus.

They came to a gate opening on to Little Deeping common; Erebus vaulted
it gracefully; the Terror, hampered by the bag of booty, climbed over
it (for the Twins it was always simpler to vault or climb over a gate
than to unlatch it and walk through) and took their way along a narrow
path through the gorse and bracken. They had gone some fifty yards,
when from among the bracken on their right a voice cried: “Bang-g-g!
Bang-g-g!”

The Twins fell to the earth and lay still; and Wiggins came out of the
gorse, his wooden rifle on his shoulder, a smile of proud triumph on
his richly freckled face. He stood over the fallen Twins; and his smile
of triumph changed to a scowl of fiendish ferocity.

“Ha! Ha! Shot through the heads!” he cried. “Their bones will bleach in
the pathless forest while their scalps hang in the wigwam of Red Bear
the terror of the Cherokees!”

Then he scalped the Twins with a formidable but wooden knife. Then he
took from his knickerbockers pocket a tattered and dirty note-book, an
inconceivable note-book (it was the only thing to curb the exuberant
imagination of Erebus) made an entry in it, and said in a tone of
lively satisfaction: “You’re only one game ahead.”

“I thought we were three,” said Erebus, rising.

“They’re down in the book,” said Wiggins; firmly; and his bright blue
eyes were very stern.

“Well, we shall have to spend a whole afternoon getting well ahead of
you again,” said Erebus, shaking out her dark curls.

Wiggins waged a deadly war with the Twins. He ambushed and scalped
them; they ambushed and scalped him. Seeing that they had already
passed their thirteenth birthday, it was a great condescension on their
part to play with a boy of ten; and they felt it. But Wiggins was a
favored friend; and the game filled intervals between sterner deeds.

The Terror handed Wiggins an apple; and the three of them moved swiftly
on across the common. Wiggins was one of those who spurn the earth. Now
and again, for obscure but profound reasons, he would suddenly spring
into the air and proceed by leaps and bounds.

Once when he slowed down to let them overtake him, he said, “The game
isn’t really fair; you’re two to one.”

“You keep very level,” said the Terror politely.

“Yes; it’s my superior astuteness,” said Wiggins sedately.

“Goodness! What words you use!” said Erebus in a somewhat jealous tone.

“It’s being so much with my father; you see, he has a European
reputation,” Wiggins explained.

“Yes, everybody says that. But what is a European reputation?” said
Erebus in a captious tone.

“Everybody in Europe knows him,” said Wiggins; and he spurned the
earth.

They called him Wiggins because his name was Rupert. It seemed to them
a name both affected and ostentatious. Besides, crop it as you might,
his hair _would_ assume the appearance of a mop.

They came out of the narrow path into a broader rutted cart-track to
see two figures coming toward them, eighty yards away.

“It’s Mum,” said Erebus.

Quick as thought the Terror dropped behind her, slipped off the bag of
booty, and thrust it into a gorse-bush.

“And—and—it’s the Cruncher with her!” cried Erebus in a tone in which
disgust outrang surprise.

“Of all the sickening things! The Cruncher!” cried the Terror, echoing
her disgust. “What’s he come down again for?”

They paused; then went on their way with gloomy faces to meet the
approaching pair.

The gentleman whom they called the “Cruncher,” and who from their tones
of disgust had so plainly failed to win their young hearts was Captain
Baster of the Twenty-fourth Hussars; and they called him the Cruncher
on account of the vigor with which he plied his large, white, prominent
teeth.

They had not gone five yards when Wiggins said in a tone of
superiority: “_I_ know why he’s come down.”

“Why?” said the Terror quickly.

“He’s come down to marry your mother,” said Wiggins.

“What?” cried the Twins with one voice, one look of blank
consternation; and they stopped short.

“How dare you say a silly thing like that?” cried Erebus fiercely.

“_I_ didn’t say it,” protested Wiggins. “Mrs. Blenkinsop said it.”

“That silly old gossip!” cried Erebus.

“And Mrs. Morton said it, too,” said Wiggins. “They came to tea
yesterday and talked about it. I was there: there was a plum cake—one
of those rich ones from Springer’s at Rowington. And they said it would
be such a good thing for both of you because he’s so awfully rich: the
Terror would go to Eton; and you’d go to a good school and get a proper
bringing-up and grow up a lady, after all—”

“I wouldn’t go! I should hate it!” cried Erebus.

“Yes; they said you wouldn’t like wholesome discipline,” said the
faithful reporter. “And they didn’t seem to think your mother would
like it either—marrying the Cruncher.”

“Like it? She wouldn’t dream of it—a bounder like that!” said the
Terror.

“I don’t know—I don’t know—if she thought it would be good for us—she’d
do anything for us—you know she would!” cried Erebus, wringing her
hands in anxious fear.

The Terror thrust his hands into his pockets; his square chin stuck out
in dogged resolution; a deep frown furrowed his brow; and his face was
flushed.

“This must be stopped,” he said through his set teeth.

“But how?” said Erebus.

“We’ll find a way. It’s war!” said the Terror darkly.

Wiggins spurned the earth joyfully: “I’m on your side,” he said. “I’m a
trusty ally. He called me Freckles.”

“Come on,” said the Terror. “We’d better face him.”

They walked firmly to meet the detested enemy. As they drew near, the
Terror’s face recovered its flawless serenity; but Erebus was scowling
still.

From twenty yards away Captain Baster greeted them in a rich hearty
voice: “How’s Terebus and the Error; and how’s Freckles?” he cried, and
laughed heartily at his own delightful humor.

The Twins greeted him with a cold, almost murderous politeness; Wiggins
shook hands with Mrs. Dangerfield very warmly and left out Captain
Baster.

“I’m always pleased to see you with the Twins, Wiggins,” said Mrs.
Dangerfield with her delightful smile. “I know you keep them out of
mischief.”

“It’s generally all over before I come,” said Wiggins somewhat glumly;
and of a sudden it occurred to him to spurn the earth.

“I’ve not had that kiss yet, Terebus. I’m going to have it this time
I’m here,” said Captain Baster playfully; and he laughed his rich
laugh.

“Are you?” said Erebus through her clenched teeth; and she gazed at him
with the eyes of hate.

They turned; and Mrs. Dangerfield said, “You’ll come to tea with us,
Wiggins?”

“Thank you very much,” said Wiggins; and he spurned the earth. As he
alighted on it once more, he added. “Tea at other people’s houses is so
much nicer than at home. Don’t you think so, Terror?”

“I always eat more—somehow,” said the Terror with a grave smile.

They walked slowly across the common, a protecting twin on either side
of Mrs. Dangerfield; and Captain Baster, in the strong facetious vein,
enlivened the walk with his delightful humor. The gallant officer was
the very climax of the florid, a stout, high-colored, black-eyed,
glossy-haired young man of twenty-eight, with a large tip-tilted nose,
neatly rounded off in a little knob forever shiny. The son of the
famous pickle millionaire, he had enjoyed every advantage which great
wealth can bestow, and was now enjoying heartily a brave career in a
crack regiment. The crack regiment, cold, phlegmatic, unappreciative,
was not enjoying it. To his brother officers he was known as
Pallybaster, a name he had won for himself by his frequent remark, “I’m
a very pally man.” It was very true: it was difficult, indeed, for any
one whom he thought might be useful to him, to avoid his friendship,
for, in addition to all the advantages which great wealth bestows, he
enjoyed an uncommonly thick skin, an armor-plate impenetrable to snubs.

All the way to Colet House, he maintained a gay facetious flow of
personal talk that made Erebus grind her teeth, now and again suffused
the face of Wiggins with a flush of mortification that dimmed his
freckles, and wrinkled Mrs. Dangerfield’s white brow in a distressful
frown. The Terror, serene, impassive, showed no sign of hearing him;
his mind was hard at work on this very serious problem with which he
had been so suddenly confronted. More than once Erebus countered a
witticism with a sharp retort, but with none sharp enough to pierce the
rhinocerine hide of the gallant officer. Once this unbidden but
humorous guest was under their roof, the laws of hospitality denied her
even this relief. She could only treat him with a steely civility. The
steeliness did not check the easy flow of his wit.

He looked oddly out of his place in the drawing-room of Colet House; he
was too new for it. The old, worn, faded, carefully polished furniture,
for the most part of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century,
seemed abashed in the presence of his floridness. It seemed to demand
the setting of spacious, ornately glittering hotels. Mrs. Dangerfield
liked him less in her own drawing-room than anywhere. When her eyes
rested on him in it, she was troubled by a curious feeling that only by
some marvelous intervention of providence had he escaped calling in a
bright plaid satin tie.

The fact that he was not in his proper frame, though he was not
unconscious of it, did not trouble Captain Baster. Indeed, he took some
credit to himself for being so little contemptuous of the shabby
furniture. In a high good humor he went on shining and shining all
through tea; and though at the end of it his luster was for a while
dimmed by the discovery that he had left his cigarette-case at the inn
and there were no cigarettes in the house, he was presently shining
again. Then the Twins and Wiggins rose and retired firmly into the
garden.

They came out into the calm autumn evening with their souls seething.

“He’s a pig—and a beast! We can’t let Mum marry him! We _must_ stop
it!” cried Erebus.

“It’s all very well to say ‘must.’ But you know what Mum is: if she
thinks a thing is for our good, do it she will,” said the Terror
gloomily.

“And she never consults us—never!” cried Erebus.

“Only when she’s a bit doubtful,” said the Terror.

“Then she’s not doubtful now. She hasn’t said a word to us about it,”
said Erebus.

“That’s what looks so bad. It looks as if she’d made up her mind
already; and if she has, it’s no use talking to her,” said the Terror
yet more gloomily.

They were silent; and the bright eyes of Wiggins moved expectantly
backward and forward from one to the other. He preserved a decorous
sympathetic silence.

“No, it’s no good talking to Mum,” said Erebus presently in a
despairing tone.

“Well, we must leave her out of it and just squash the Cruncher
ourselves,” said the Terror.

“But you can’t squash the Cruncher!” cried Erebus.

“Why not? We’ve squashed other people, haven’t we?” said the Terror
sharply.

“Never any one so thick-skinned as him,” said Erebus.

The Terror frowned deeply again: “We can always try,” he said coldly.
“And look here: I’ve been thinking all tea-time: if stepchildren don’t
like stepfathers, there’s no reason why stepfathers should like
stepchildren.”

“The Cruncher likes us, though it’s no fault of ours,” said Erebus.

“That’s just it; he doesn’t really know us. If he saw the kind of
stepchildren he was in for, it might choke him off,” said the Terror.

“But he can’t even see we hate him,” objected Erebus.

“No, and if he did, he wouldn’t mind, he’d think it a joke. My idea
isn’t to show him how we feel, but to show him what we can do, if we
give our minds to it,” said the Terror in a somewhat sinister tone.

Erebus gazed at him, taking in his meaning. Then a dazzling smile
illumined her charming face; and she cried: “Oh, yes! Let’s give him
socks! Let’s begin at once!”

“Yes: I’ll help! I’m a trusty ally!” cried Wiggins; and he spurned the
earth joyfully at the thought.

They were silent a while, their faces grave and intent, cudgeling their
brains for some signal exploit with which to open hostilities.

Presently Wiggins said: “You might make him an apple-pie bed. They’re
very annoying when you’re sleepy.”

He spoke with an air of experience.

“What’s an apple-pie bed?” said Erebus scornfully.

Wiggins hung his head, abashed.

“It’s a beginning, anyhow,” said the Terror in an approving tone; and
he added with the air of a philosopher: “Little things, and big things,
they all count.”

“I was trying to think how to break his leg; but I can’t,” said Erebus
bitterly.

“By Jove! That cigarette-case! Come on!” cried the Terror; and he led
the way swiftly out of the garden and took the path to Little Deeping.

“Where are we going?” said Erebus.

“We’re going to make him that apple-pie bed. There’s nothing like
making a beginning. We shall think of heaps of other things. If we
don’t worry about them, they’ll occur to us. They always do,” said the
Terror, at once practical and philosophical.

They walked briskly down to The Plough, the one inn of Little Deeping,
where, as usual, Captain Baster was staying, and went in through the
front door which stood open. At the sound of their footsteps in her
hall the stout but good-humored landlady came bustling out of the bar
to learn what they wanted.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pittaway,” said the Terror politely. “We’ve come
for Captain Baster’s cigarette-case. He’s left it somewhere in his
room.”

At the thought of handling the shining cigarette-case Mrs. Pittaway
rubbed her hands on her apron; then the look of favor with which her
eyes had rested on the fair guileless face of the Terror, changed to a
frown; and she said: “Bother the thing! It’s sure to be stuck somewhere
out of sight. And the bar full, too.”

“Don’t you trouble; I’ll get it. I know the bedroom,” said the Terror
with ready amiability; and he started to mount the stairs.

“Oh, thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Pittaway, bustling back to the bar.

Erebus and Wiggins dashed lightly up the stairs after the Terror. In
less than two minutes the deft hands of the Twins had dealt with the
bed; and their intelligent eyes were eagerly scanning the hapless
unprotected bedroom. Erebus sprang to the shaving-brush on the
mantelpiece and thrust it under the mattress. The Terror locked Captain
Baster’s portmanteau; and as he placed the keys beside the
shaving-brush, he said coldly:

“That’ll teach him not to be so careless.”

Erebus giggled; then she took the water-jug and filled one of Captain
Baster’s inviting dress-boots with water. Wiggins rocked with laughter.

“Don’t stand giggling there! Why don’t you do something?” said Erebus
sharply.

Wiggins looked thoughtful; then he said: “A clothes-brush in bed is
very annoying when you stick your foot against it.”

He stepped toward the dressing-table; but the Terror was before him. He
took the clothes-brush and set it firmly, bristles outward, against the
bottom of the folded sheet of the apple-pie bed, where one or the other
of Captain Baster’s feet was sure to find it. The Terror did not care
which foot was successful.

Then inspiration failed them; the Terror took the cigarette-case from
the dressing-table; they came quietly down the stairs and out of the
inn.

As they turned up the street the Terror said with modest if somewhat
vengeful triumph: “There! you see things _do_ occur to us.” Then with
his usual scrupulous fairness he added: “But it was Wiggins who set us
going.”

“I’m an ally; and he called me Freckles,” said Wiggins vengefully; and
once more he spurned the earth.

On their way home, half-way up the lane, where the trees arched most
thickly overhead, they came to a patch of deepish mud which was too
sheltered to have dried after the heavy rain of the day before.

“Mind the mud, Wiggins,” said Erebus, mindful of his carelessness in
the matter.

Wiggins walked gingerly along the side of it and said: “It wouldn’t be
a nice place to fall down in, would it?”

The Terror went on a few paces, stopped short, laughed a hard, sinister
little laugh, and said: “Wiggins, you’re a treasure!”

“What is it? What is it now?” said Erebus quickly.

“A little job of my own. It wouldn’t do for you and Wiggins to have a
hand in it, he’ll swear so,” said the Terror.

“Who’ll swear?” said Erebus.

“The Cruncher. And you’re a girl and Wiggins is too young to hear such
language,” said the Terror.

“Rubbish!” said Erebus sharply. “Tell us what it is.”

The Terror shook his head.

“It’s a beastly shame! I ought to help—I always do,” cried Erebus in a
bitterly aggrieved tone.

The Terror shook his head.

“All right,” said Erebus. “Who wants to help in a stupid thing like
that? But all the same you’ll go and make a silly mull of it without
me—you always do.”

“You jolly well wait and see,” said the Terror with calm confidence.

Erebus was still muttering darkly about piggishness when they reached
the house.

They went into the drawing-room in a body and found Captain Baster
still talking to their mother, in the middle, indeed, of a long story
illustrating his prowess in a game of polo, on two three-hundred-guinea
and one three-hundred-and-fifty-guinea ponies. He laid great stress on
the prices he had paid for them.

When it came to an end, the Terror gave him his cigarette-case.

Mrs. Dangerfield observed this example of the thoughtfulness of her
offspring with an air of doubtful surprise.

Captain Baster took the cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity:
“Thank you, Error—thank you. But why didn’t you bring it to me,
Terebus? Then you’d have earned that kiss I’m going to give you.”

Erebus gazed at him with murderous eyes, and said in a sinister tone:
“Oh, I helped to get it.”

CHAPTER II
GUARDIAN ANGELS

At seven o’clock Captain Baster took his leave to dine at his inn. Of
his own accord he promised faithfully to return at nine sharp. He left
the house a proud and happy man, for he knew that he had been shining
before Mrs. Dangerfield with uncommon brilliance.

He was not by any means blind to her charm and beauty, for though she
was four years older than he, she contrived never to look less than two
years younger, and that without any aid from the cosmetic arts. But he
chiefly saw in her an admirable ladder to those social heights to which
his ardent soul aspired to climb. She had but to return to the polite
world from which the loss of her husband and her straightened
circumstances had removed her, to find herself a popular woman with a
host of friends in the exalted circles Captain Baster burned to adorn.
Yet it must not for a moment be supposed that he was proposing a
mercenary marriage for her; he was sure that she loved him, for he felt
rather than knew that with women he was irresistible.

It was not love, however, that knitted Mrs. Dangerfield’s brow in a
troubled frown as she dressed; nor was it love that caused her to
select to wear that evening one of her oldest and dowdiest gowns, a
gown with which she had never been truly pleased. The troubled air did
not leave her face during dinner; and it seemed to affect the Twins,
for they, too, were gloomy. They were pleased, indeed, with the
beginning of the campaign, but still very doubtful of success in the
end. Where their interests were concerned their mother was of a
firmness indeed hard to move.

Moreover, she kept looking at them in an odd considering fashion that
disturbed them, especially at the Terror. Erebus in a pretty light
frock of her mother’s days of prosperity, which had been cut down and
fitted to her, was a sight to brighten any one’s eyes; but the sleeves
of the dark coat which the Terror wore on Sundays and on gala evenings,
bared a length of wrist distressing to a mother’s eye.

The fine high spirits of Captain Baster were somewhat dashed by his
failure to find his keys and open his portmanteau, since he would be
unable to ravish Mrs. Dangerfield’s eye that evening by his
distinguished appearance in the unstained evening dress of an English
gentleman. After a long hunt for the mislaid keys, in which the harried
staff of The Plough took part, he made up his mind that he must appear
before her, with all apologies, in the tweed suit he was wearing. It
was a bitter thought, for in a tweed suit he could not really feel a
conquering hero after eight o’clock at night.

Then he put his foot into a dress-boot full of cold water. It was a
good water-tight boot; and it had faithfully retained all of the water
its lining had not soaked up. The gallant officer said a good deal
about its retentive properties to the mute boot.

At dinner be learned from Mrs. Pittaway that the obliging Terror had
himself fetched the cigarette-case from his bedroom. A flash of
intuition connected the Terror with the watered boot; and he begged
her, with loud acerbity, never again to let any one—any one!!—enter his
bedroom. Mrs. Pittaway objected that slops could not be emptied, or
beds made without human intervention. He begged her, not perhaps
unreasonably, not to talk like a fool; and she liked him none the
better for his directness.

Food always soothed him; and he rose from his dinner in better spirits.
As he rose from it, the Terror, standing among the overarching trees
which made the muddy patch in the lane so dark, was drawing a
clothes-line tight. It ran through the hedge that hid him to the hedge
on the other side of the lane. There it was fastened to a stout stake;
and he was fastening it to the lowest rail of a post and rails. At its
tightest it rose a foot above the roadway just at the beginning of the
mud-patch. It was at its tightest.

Heartened by his dinner and two extra whiskies and sodas, Captain
Baster set out for Colet House at a brisk pace. As he moved through the
bracing autumn air, his spirits rose yet higher; that night—that very
night he would crown Mrs. Dangerfield’s devotion with his avowal of an
answering passion. He pressed forward swiftly like a conqueror; and
like a conqueror he whistled. Then he found the clothes-line, suddenly,
pitched forward and fell, not heavily, for the mud was thick, but
sprawling. He rose, oozy and dripping, took a long breath, and the
welkin shuddered as it rang.

The Terror did not shudder; he was going home like the wind.

Having sent Erebus to bed at a few minutes to nine Mrs. Dangerfield
waited restlessly for her tardy guest, her charming face still set in a
troubled frown. Her woman’s instinct assured her that Captain Baster
would propose that night; and she dreaded it. Two or three times she
rose and walked up and down the room; and when she saw her deep, dark,
troubled eyes in the two old, almost giltless round mirrors, they did
not please her as they usually did. Those eyes were one of the sources
from which had sprung Captain Baster’s attraction to her.

But there were the Twins; she longed to do so many useful, needful
things for them; and marriage with Captain Baster was the way of doing
them. She told herself that he would make an excellent stepfather and
husband; that under his unfortunate manner were a good heart and
sterling qualities. She assured herself that she had the power to draw
them out; once he was her husband, she would change him. But still she
was ill at ease. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she was doubtful of
her power to make a silk purse out of rhinoceros hide.

When at last a note came from The Plough to say that he was
unfortunately prevented from coming that evening, but would come next
morning to take her for a walk, she was filled with so extravagant a
relief that it frightened her. She sat down and wrote out a telegram to
her brother, rang for old Sarah, their trusty hard-working maid, and
bade her tell the Terror, who had slipped quietly upstairs to bed at
one minute to nine, to send it off in the morning. She did not wish to
take the chance of not waking and despatching it as early as possible.
She must have advice; and Sir Maurice Falconer was not only a shrewd
man of the world, but he would also advise her with the keenest regard
for her interests. She tried not to hope that he would find marriage
with Captain Baster incompatible with them.

Captain Baster awoke in less than his usual cheerfulness. He thought
for a while of the Terror and boots and mud with a gloomy unamiability.
Then he rose and betook himself to his toilet. In the middle of it he
missed his shaving-brush. He hunted for it furiously; he could have
sworn that he had taken it out of his portmanteau. He did swear, but
not to any definite fact. There was nothing for it: he must expose his
tender chin to the cruel razor of a village barber.

Then he disliked the look of his tweed suit; all traces of mud had not
vanished from it. In one short night it had lost its pristine
freshness. This and the ordeal before his chin made his breakfast
gloomy; and soon after it he entered the barber’s shop with the air of
one who has abandoned hope. Later he came out of it with his roving
black eye full of tears of genuine feeling; his scraped chin was
smarting cruelly and unattractive in patches—red patches. At the door
the breathless, excited and triumphant maid of the inn accosted him
with the news that she had just found his keys and his shaving-brush
under the mattress of his bed. He looked round the village of Little
Deeping blankly; it suddenly seemed to him a squalid place.

None the less it was a comforting thought that he would not be put to
the expense of having his portmanteau broken open and fitted with a new
lock, for his great wealth had never weakened the essential thriftiness
of his soul. Half an hour later, in changed tweeds but with unchanged
chin, he took his way to Colet House, thinking with great unkindness of
his future stepson. As he drew near it he saw that that stepson was
awaiting him at the garden gate; nearer still he saw that he was
awaiting him with an air of ineffable serenity.

The Terror politely opened the gate for him, and with a kind smile
asked him if he had slept well.

The red blood of the Basters boiled in the captain’s veins, and he said
somewhat thickly: “Look here, my lad, I don’t want any more of your
tricks! You play another on me, and I’ll give you the soundest licking
you ever had in your life!”

The serenity on the Terror’s face broke up into an expression of the
deepest pain: “Whatever’s the matter?” he said in a tone of amazement.
“I thought you loved a joke. You said you did—yesterday—at tea.”

“You try it on again!” said Captain Baster.

“Now, whatever has put your back up?” said the Terror in a tone of even
greater amazement. “Was it the apple-pie bed, or the lost keys, or the
water in the boot, or the clothes-line across the road?”

It was well that the Terror could spring with a cat’s swiftness:
Captain Baster’s boot missed him by a hair’s breadth.

The Terror ran round the house, in at the back door and up to the
bedroom of Erebus.

“Waxy?” he cried joyously. “He’s black in the face! I told him he said
he loved a joke.”

Erebus only growled deep down in her throat. She was bitterly aggrieved
that she had not had a hand in Captain Baster’s downfall the night
before. The Terror had awakened her to tell her joyfully of his
glorious exploit and of the shuddering welkin.

He paid no heed to the rumbling of her discontent; he said: “Now, you
quite understand. You’ll stick to them like a leech. You won’t give him
any chance of talking to Mum alone. It’s most important.”

“I understand. But what’s that? Anybody could do it,” she said in a
tone of extreme bitterness. “It’s you that’s getting all the real fun.”

“But you’ll be able to make yourself beastly disagreeable, if you’re
careful,” said the Terror.

“Of course, I shall. But what’s that? I tell you what it is: I’m going
to have my proper share of the real fun. The first chance I get, I’m
going to stone him—so there!” said Erebus fiercely.

“All right. But it doesn’t seem quite the thing for a girl to do,” said
the Terror in a judicial tone.

“Rats!” said Erebus.

It was well that Mrs. Dangerfield kept Captain Baster waiting; it gave
the purple tinge, which was heightening his floridness somewhat
painfully, time to fade. When she did come to him, he was further
annoyed by the fact that Erebus came too, and with a truculent air
announced her intention of accompanying them. Mrs. Dangerfield was
surprised; Erebus seldom showed any taste for such a gentle occupation.
Also she was relieved; she did not want Captain Baster to propose
before she had taken counsel with her brother.

Captain Baster started in a gloomy frame of mind; he did not try to
hide from himself the fact that Mrs. Dangerfield had lost some of her
charm: she was the mother of the Terror. He found, too, that his
instinctive distaste for the company of Erebus was not ungrounded. She
was a nuisance; she would talk about wet boots; the subject seemed to
fascinate her. Then, when at last he recovered his spirits, grew once
more humorous, and even rose to the proposing point, there was no
getting rid of her. She was impervious to hints; she refused, somewhat
pertly, to pause and gather the luscious blackberries. How could a man
be his humorous self in these circumstances? He felt that his humor was
growing strained, losing its delightful lightness.

Then the accident: it was entirely Erebus’ own fault (he could swear
it) that he tripped over her foot and pitched among those infernal
brambles. Her howls of anguish were all humbug: he had not hurt her
ankle (he could swear it); there was not a tear. The moment he offered,
furiously, to carry her, she walked without a vestige of a limp.

Mrs. Dangerfield had no right to look vexed with him; if one brought up
one’s children like that—well. Certainly she was losing her charm; she
was the mother of Erebus also.

His doubt, whether the mother of such children was the right kind of
wife for him, had grown very serious indeed, when, as they drew near
Colet House, a slim, tall young man of an extreme elegance and
distinction came through the garden gate to meet them.

With a cry of “Uncle Maurice!” the crippled Erebus dashed to meet him
with the light bounds of an antelope. Captain Baster could hardly
believe his eyes; he knew the young man by sight, by name and by
repute. It was Sir Maurice Falconer, a man he longed to boast his
friend. With his aid a man might climb to the highest social peaks.

When Mrs. Dangerfield introduced him as her brother (he had never
dreamed it) he could not believe his good fortune. But why had he not
learned this splendid fact before? Why had he been kept in the dark? He
did not reflect that he had been so continuously busy making
confidences about himself, his possessions and his exploits to her that
he had given her the smallest opportunities of telling him anything
about herself.

But he was not one to lose a golden opportunity; he set about making up
for lost time with a will; and never had he so thoroughly demonstrated
his right to the name of Pallybaster. His friendliness was
overwhelming. Before the end of lunch he had invited Sir Maurice to
dine with him at his mess, to dine with him at two of his clubs, to
shoot with him, to ride a horse of his in the forthcoming regimental
steeplechases, to go with him on a yachting cruise in the
Mediterranean.

All through the afternoon his friendliness grew and grew. He could not
bear that any one else should have a word with Sir Maurice. The Twins
were intolerable with their interruptions, their claims on their
uncle’s attention. They disgusted Captain Baster: when he became their
stepfather, it would be his first task to see that they learned a
respectful silence in the presence of their elders.

He never gave a thought to his proposal; he sought no occasion to make
it. Captain Baster’s love was of his life a thing apart, but his social
aspirations were the chief fact of his existence. Besides, there was no
haste; he knew that Mrs. Dangerfield was awaiting his avowal with a
passionate eagerness; any time would do for that. But he must seize the
fleeting hour and bind Sir Maurice to himself by the bond of the
warmest friendship.

Again and again he wondered how Sir Maurice could give his attention to
the interrupting exacting Twins, when he had a man of the world,
humorous, knowing, wealthy, to talk to. He tried to make opportunities
for him to escape from them; Sir Maurice missed those opportunities; he
did not seem to see them. In truth Captain Baster was a little
disappointed in Sir Maurice: he did not find him frankly responsive:
polite—yes; indeed, politeness could go no further. But he lacked
warmth. After all he had not pinned him down to the definite acceptance
of a single invitation.

When, at seven o’clock, he tore himself away with the hearty assurance
that he would be back at nine sharp, he was not sure that he had made a
bosom friend. He felt that the friendship might need clenching.

As the front door shut behind him, Sir Maurice wiped his brow with the
air of one who has paused from exhausting toil: “I feel
sticky—positively sticky,” he said. “Oh, Erebus, you do have gummy
friends! I thought we should never get rid of him. I thought he’d stuck
himself to us for the rest of our natural lives.”

Mrs. Dangerfield smiled; and the Terror said in a tone of deep meaning:
“That’s what he’s up to.”

“He’s not a friend of mine!” cried Erebus hotly.

“We call him the Cruncher—because of his teeth,” said the Terror.

“Then beware, Erebus—beware! You are young and possibly savory,” said
Sir Maurice.

“You children had better go and get ready for dinner,” said Mrs.
Dangerfield.

The Twins went to the door. On the threshold Erebus turned and said:
“It’s Mum he wants to crunch up—not me.”

The bolt shot, she fled through the door.

Sir Maurice looked at his sister and said softly:

“Oho! I see—heroism. That was what you wanted to consult me about.”
Then he laid his hand on her shoulder affectionately and added: “It
won’t do, Anne—it won’t do at all. I am convinced of it.”

“Do you think so?” said Mrs. Dangerfield in a tone in which
disappointment and relief were very nicely blended.

“Think? I’m sure of it,” said Sir Maurice in a tone of complete
conviction.

“But the children; he could do so much for the children,” pleaded Mrs.
Dangerfield.

“He could, but he wouldn’t. That kind of bounder never does any one any
good but himself. No, no; the children are right in calling him the
Cruncher. He would just crunch you up; and it is a thousand times
better for them to have an uncrunched mother than all the money that
ever came out of pickles.”

“Well, you know best. You do understand these things,” said Mrs.
Dangerfield; and she sighed.

“I do understand Basters,” said Sir Maurice in a confident tone.

Mrs. Dangerfield ran up-stairs to dress, on the light feet of a girl; a
weight oppressive, indeed, had been lifted from her spirit.

Dinner was a very bright and lively meal, though now and again a grave
thoughtfulness clouded the spirits of Erebus. Once Sir Maurice asked
her the cause of it. She only shook her head.

Captain Baster ate his dinner in a sizzling excitement: he knew that he
had made a splendid first impression; he was burning to deepen it. But
on his eager way back to Colet House, he walked warily, feeling before
him with his stick for clotheslines. He came out of the dark lane into
the broad turf road, which runs across the common to the house, with a
strong sense of relief and became once more his hearty care-free self.

There was not enough light to display the jaunty air with which he
walked in all its perfection; but there seemed to be light enough for
more serious matters, for a stone struck him on the thigh with
considerable force. He had barely finished the jump of pained surprise
with which he greeted it, when another stone whizzed viciously past his
head; then a third struck him on the shoulder.

With the appalling roar of a bull of Bashan the gallant officer dashed
in the direction whence, he judged, the stones came. He was just in
time to stop a singularly hard stone with his marble brow. Then he
found a gorse-bush (by tripping over a root) a gorse-bush which seemed
unwilling to release him from its stimulating, not to say prickly,
embrace. As he wallowed in it another stone found him, his ankle-bone.

He wrenched himself from the embrace of the gorse-bush, found his feet
and realized that there was only one thing to do. He tore along the
turf road to Colet House as hard as he could pelt. A stone struck the
garden gate as he opened it. He did not pause to ring; he opened the
front door, plunged heavily across the hall into the drawing-room. The
Terror formed the center of a domestic scene; he was playing draughts
with his Uncle Maurice.

Captain Baster glared at him with unbelieving eyes and gasped: “I—I
made sure it was that young whelp!”

This sudden violent entry of a bold but disheveled hussar produced a
natural confusion; Mrs. Dangerfield, Sir Maurice and the Terror sprang
to their feet, asking with one voice what had befallen him.

Captain Baster sank heavily on to a chair and instantly sprang up from
it with a howl as he chanced on several tokens of the gorse-bush’s
clinging affection.

“I’ve been stoned—stoned by some hulking scoundrels on the common!” he
cried; and he displayed the considerable bump rising on his marble
brow.

Mrs. Dangerfield was full of concern and sympathy; Sir Maurice was
cool, interested but cool; he did not blaze up into the passionate
indignation of a bosom friend.

“How many of them were there?” said the Terror.

“From the number of stones they threw I should think there were a
dozen,” said Captain Baster; and he panted still.

The Terror looked puzzled.

“I know—I know what it is!” cried Mrs. Dangerfield with an illuminating
flash of womanly intuition. “You’ve been humorous with some of the
villagers!”

“No, no! I haven’t joked with a single one of them!” cried Captain
Baster. “But I’ll teach the scoundrels a lesson! I’ll put the police on
them tomorrow morning. I’ll send for a detective from London. I’ll
prosecute them.”

Then Erebus entered, her piquant face all aglow: “I couldn’t find your
handkerchief anywhere, Mum. It took me ever such a time,” she said,
giving it to her.

The puzzled air faded from the Terror’s face; and he said in a tone of
deep meaning: “Have you been running to find it? You’re quite out of
breath.”

For a moment a horrid suspicion filled the mind of Captain Baster.… But
no: it was impossible—a child in whose veins flowed some of the bluest
blood in England. Besides, her slender arms could never have thrown the
stones as straight and hard as that.

On the other hand Sir Maurice appeared to have lost for once his superb
self-possession; he was staring at his beautiful niece with his mouth
slightly open. He muttered; something about finding his handkerchief,
and stumbled out of the room. They heard a door bang up-stairs; then,
through the ceiling, they heard a curious drumming sound. It occurred
to the Terror that it might be the heels of Sir Maurice on the floor.

Mrs. Dangerfield rang for old Sarah and instructed her to pull the
gorse prickles out of Captain Baster’s clothes. She had nearly finished
when Sir Maurice returned. He carried a handkerchief in his hand, and
he had recovered his superb self-possession; but he seemed somewhat
exhausted.

Captain Baster was somewhat excessive in the part of the wounded hero;
and for a while he continued to talk ferociously of the vengeance he
would wreak on the scoundrelly villagers. But after a while he forgot
his pricks and bruises to bask in the presence of Sir Maurice; and he
plied him with unflagging friendliness for the rest of the evening.

The Twins were allowed to sit up till ten o’clock since their Uncle
Maurice was staying with them; and since the Terror was full of
admiration and approval of Erebus’ strenuous endeavor to instil into
Captain Baster the perils and drawbacks of stepfatherhood, he brushed
out her abundant hair for her, an office he sometimes performed when
she was in high favor with him. As he did it she related gleefully the
stoning of their enemy.

When she had done, he said warmly: “It was ripping. But the nuisance
is: he doesn’t know it was you who did it, and so it’s rather wasted.”

“Don’t you worry: I’ll let him know sometime to-morrow,” said Erebus
firmly.

“Yes; but he’s awfully waxy: suppose he prosecutes you?” said the
Terror doubtfully.

Erebus considered the point; then she said: “I don’t think he’d do
that; he’d look so silly being stoned by a girl. Anyhow, I’ll chance
it.”

“All right,” said the Terror. “It’s worth chancing it to put him off
marrying mother. And of course Uncle Maurice is here. He’ll see nothing
serious happens.”

“Of course he will,” said Erebus.

It must have been that the unflagging friendliness of Captain Baster
had weighed on their uncle’s mind, for Erebus, coming softly on him
from behind as he leaned over the garden gate after breakfast, heard
him singing to himself, and paused to listen to his song.

It went:

“_Where did his colonel dig him up,
So young, so fair, so sweet,
With his shining nose, and his square, square toes?
Was it Wapping or Basinghall Street?_”

He was so pleased with the effort that he sang it over to himself,
softly, twice with an air of deep satisfaction; and twice the moving
but silent lips of Erebus repeated it.

He was silent; and she said: “Oh, uncle! It’s splendid!”

Sir Maurice started and turned sharply: “You tell any one, little
pitcher, and I’ll pull your long ears,” he said amiably.

Erebus made no rash promises; she gazed at him with inscrutable eyes;
then nodding toward a figure striding swiftly over the common, she
said: “Here he comes.”

Sir Maurice gained the threshold of the front door in two bounds,
paused and cried: “I’m going back to bed! Tell him I’m in bed!”

He vanished, slamming the door behind him.

Captain Baster asked for Sir Maurice cheerfully; and his face fell when
Erebus told him that he had gone back to bed. Mrs. Dangerfield,
informed of her brother’s shrinking, had to be very firm with his new
friend to induce him to go for a walk with her and Erebus. He showed an
inclination to linger about the house till his sun should rise.

Then he tried to shorten the walk; but in this matter too Mrs.
Dangerfield was firm. She did not bring him back till half past twelve,
only to learn that Sir Maurice was very busy writing letters in his
bedroom. Captain Baster hoped for an invitation to lunch (he hinted as
much) but he was disappointed. In the end he returned to The Plough,
chafing furiously; he felt that his morning had been barren.

He was soon back at Colet House, but too late; Sir Maurice had started
on a walk with the Terror. Captain Baster said cheerily that he would
overtake them, and set out briskly to do so. He walked hard enough to
compass that end; and it is probable that he would have had a much
better chance of succeeding, had not Erebus sent him eastward whereas
Sir Maurice and the Terror had gone westward.

Captain Baster returned to Colet House in time for tea; and his heart
swelled big within him to learn that Mrs. Dangerfield had invited some
friends to meet him and her brother. Here was his chance to shine, to
show Sir Maurice his social mettle.

He could have wished that the party had been larger. They were only a
dozen all told: Mr. Carruthers, the squire of Little Deeping, the vicar
and his wife, the higher mathematician, father of Wiggins, Mrs.
Blenkinsop and Mrs. Morton, and Wiggins himself, who had spent most of
the afternoon with Erebus. Captain Baster would have preferred thirty
or forty, but none the less he fell to work with a will.

Mrs. Dangerfield had taken advantage of the Indian summer afternoon to
have tea in the garden; and it gave him room to expand. He was soon the
life and soul of the gathering. He was humorous with the vicar about
the church, and with the squire about the dulling effect of the country
on the intelligence. He tried to be humorous with Mr. Carrington, the
higher mathematician, whom he took to have retired from some profession
or business. This was so signal a failure that he dropped humor and
became important, telling them of his flat in town and his
country-house, their size and their expensive furniture; he told them
about his motor-cars, his exploits at regimental cricket, at polo and
at golf.

He patronized every one with a splendid affability, every one except
Sir Maurice; and him he addressed, with a flattering air of perfect
equality, as “Maurice, old boy,” or “Maurice, old chap,” or plain
“Maurice.” He did shine; his agreeable exertions threw him into a warm
perspiration; his nose shone especially; and they all hated him.

The Twins were busy handing round tea-cups and cakes, but they were
aware that their mother’s tea-party was a failure. As a rule her little
parties were so pleasant with their atmosphere of friendliness; and her
guests went away pleased with themselves, her and one another. The
Terror was keenly alive to the effect of Captain Baster; and a faint
persistent frown troubled his serenity. Erebus was more dimly aware
that her enemy was spoiling the party. Only Sir Maurice and Mr.
Carrington really enjoyed the humorist; and Sir Maurice’s enjoyment was
mingled with vexation.

Every one had finished their tea; and they were listening to Captain
Baster in a dull aggravation and blank silence, when he came to the end
of his panegyric on his possessions and accomplishments, and remembered
his grievance. Forthwith he related at length the affair of the night
before: how he had been stoned by a dozen hulking scoundrels on the
common. When he came to the end of it, he looked round for sympathy.

His audience wore a strained rather than sympathetic air, all of them
except the higher mathematician who had turned away and was coughing
violently.

The vicar broke the silence; he said: “Er—er—yes; most extraordinary.
But I don’t think it could have been the villagers. They’re—er—very
peaceful people.”

“It must have been some rowdies from Rowington,” said the squire in the
loud tone of a man trying to persuade his hearers that he believed what
he said.

Erebus rose and walked to the gravel path; their eyes fixed in an
incredulous unwinking stare.

She picked up three pebbles from the path, choosing them with some
care. The first pebble hit the weathercock, which rose above the right
gable of the house, plumb in the middle; the second missed its tail by
a couple of inches; the third hit its tail, and the weathercock spun
round as if a vigorous gale were devoting itself to its tail only.

“That’s where I meant to hit it the first time,” said Erebus with a
little explanatory wave of her hand; and she returned to her seat.

The silence that fell was oppressive. Captain Baster gazed earnestly at
Erebus, his roving black eyes fixed in an incredulous unwinking stare.

“That shows you the danger of jumping to hasty conclusions,” said the
higher mathematician in his clear agreeable voice. “I made sure it was
the Terror.”

“So did I,” said the vicar.

“I’d have bet on it,” said the squire.

The silence fell again. Mechanically Captain Baster rubbed the blue
bump on his marble brow.

Erebus broke the silence; she said: “Has any one heard Wiggins’ new
song?”

The squire, hastily and thoughtlessly, cried: “No! Let’s hear it!”

“Come on, Wiggins!” cried the vicar heartily.

They felt that the situation was saved.

Sir Maurice did not share their relief; he knew what was coming, knew
it in the depths of his horror-stricken heart. He ground his teeth
softly and glared at the piquant and glowing face of his niece as if he
could have borne the earth’s suddenly opening and swallowing her up.

The blushing Wiggins held back a little, and kicked his left foot with
his right. Then pushed forward by the eager Terror, to whom Erebus had
chanted the song before lunch, he stepped forward and in his dear
shrill treble, sang, slightly out of tune:

“_Where did his colonel dig him up,
So young, so fair, so sweet,
With his shining nose, and his square, square toes?
Was it Wapping or Basinghall Street?_”

As he sang Wiggins looked artlessly at Captain Baster; as he finished
everybody was looking at Captain Baster’s boots; his feet required them
square-toed.

Captain Baster’s face was a rich rose-pink; he, glared round the frozen
circle now trying hard not to look at his boots; he saw the faces melt
into irrepressible smiles; he looked to Sir Maurice, the man he had
made his bosom friend, for an indignant outburst; Sir Maurice was
smiling, too.

Captain Baster snorted fiercely; then he swelled with splendid dignity,
and said loudly, but thickly, “I refuse! Yes, I refuse to mix in a
society where children are brought up as hooligans yes: as hooligans!”

He turned on his heel, strode to the gate, and turned and bellowed,
“Hooligans!”

He flung himself through the gate and strode violently across the
common.

“Oh, Wiggins! How could you?” cried Mrs. Dangerfield in a tone of
horror.

“It wasn’t Wiggins! It was me! I taught him. He didn’t understand,”
said Erebus loyally.

“I did understand—quite. But why did he call me Freckles?” said Wiggins
in a vengeful tone. “Nobody can help having freckles.”

CHAPTER III
AND THE CATS’ HOME

They watched the retreating figure of Captain Baster till it was lost
to sight among the gorse, in silence. They were glad at his going, but
sorry at the manner of it, since Mrs. Dangerfield looked distressed and
vexed.

Then the vicar said: “There is a good deal to be said for the point of
view of Wiggins, Mrs. Dangerfield. After all, Captain Baster was the
original aggressor.”

“Nevertheless I must apologize for my son’s exploding such an
uncommonly violent bomb at a quiet garden party,” said the higher
mathematician. “I suspect he underrated its effect.”

His tone was apologetic, but there was no excess of contrition in it.

“What I think is that Captain Baster’s notion of humor is catching; and
that it affected Erebus and Wiggins,” said Sir Maurice amiably. “And if
we start apologizing, there will be no end to it. I should have to come
in myself as the maker of the bomb who carelessly left it lying about.”

“It was certainly a happy effort,” said the vicar, smiling. Then he
changed the subject firmly, saying: “We’re going to London next week;
perhaps you could recommend a play to us to go to, Sir Maurice.”

A faint ripple of grateful relaxation ran round the circle and
presently it was clear that in taking himself off Captain Baster had
lifted a wet blanket of quite uncommon thickness from the party. They
were talking easily and freely; and Mrs. Dangerfield and Sir Maurice
were seeing to it that every one, even Mrs. Blenkinsop and Mrs. Morton,
were getting their little chances of shining. The Twins and Wiggins
slipped away; and their elders talked the more at their ease for their
going. In the end the little gathering which Captain Baster had so
nearly crushed, broke up in the best of spirits, all the guests in a
state of amiable satisfaction with Mrs. Dangerfield, themselves and one
another.

After they had gone Sir Maurice and Mrs. Dangerfield discussed the
exploits of Erebus; and he did his best to abate her distress at the
two onslaughts his violent niece had made on a guest. The Terror was
also doing his best in the matter: with unbending firmness he prevented
Erebus, eager to enjoy her uncle’s society, from returning to the house
till it was time to dress for dinner. He wished to give his mother time
to get over the worst of her annoyance.

Thanks to their efforts Mrs. Dangerfield did not rebuke her violent
daughter with any great severity. But even so, Erebus did not receive
these milder rebukes in the proper meek spirit. Unlike the philosophic
Terror, who for the most part accepted his mother’s just rebukes, after
a doubtful exploit, with a disarming sorrowful air, Erebus must always
make out a case for herself; and she did so now.

Displaying an injured air, she took the ground that Captain Baster was
not really a guest on the previous evening, since he was making a
descent on the house uninvited, and therefore he did not come within
the sphere of the laws of hospitality.

“Besides he never behaved like a guest,” she went on in a bitterly
aggrieved tone. “He was always making himself objectionable to every
one—especially to me. And if he was always trying to score off me, I’d
a perfect right to score off him. And anyhow, I wasn’t going to let him
marry you without doing everything I could to stop it. He’d be a
perfectly beastly stepfather—you know he would.”

This was an aspect of the matter Mrs. Dangerfield had no desire to
discuss; and flushing a little, she contented herself with closing the
discussion by telling Erebus not to do it again. She knew that however
bitterly Erebus might protest against a just rebuke, she would take it
sufficiently to heart. She was sure that she would not stone another
guest.

With the departure of Captain Baster peace settled on Colet House; and
Sir Maurice enjoyed very much his three days’ stay. The Twins, though
they were in that condition of subdued vivacity into which they always
fell after a signal exploit that came to their mother’s notice, were
very pleasant companions; and the peaceful life and early hours of
Little Deeping were grateful after the London whirl. Also he had many
talks with his sister on the matter of settling down in life, a course
of action she frequently urged on him.

When he went the Twins felt a certain dulness. It was not acute
boredom; they were preserved from that by the fact that the Terror went
every morning to study the classics with the vicar, and Erebus learned
English and French with her mother. Their afternoon leisure, therefore,
rarely palled on them.

One afternoon, as they came out of the house after lunch, Erebus
suggested that they should begin by ambushing Wiggins. They went,
therefore, toward Mr. Carrington’s house which stood nearly a mile away
on the outskirts of Little Deeping, and watched it from the edge of the
common. They saw their prey in the garden; and he tried their patience
by staying there for nearly a quarter of an hour.

Then he came briskly up the road to the common. Their eyes began to
shine with the expectation of immediate triumph, when, thirty yards
from the common’s edge, in a sudden access of caution, he bolted for
covert and disappeared in the gorse sixty yards away on their left.
They fell noiselessly back, going as quickly as concealment permitted,
to cut him off. They were successful. They caught him crossing an open
space, yelled “Bang!” together; and in accordance with the rules of the
game Wiggins fell to the ground.

They scalped him with yells of such a piercing triumph that the
immemorial oaks for a quarter of a mile round emptied themselves
hastily of the wood-pigeons feeding on their acorns.

Wiggins rose gloomily, gloomily took from his knickerbockers pocket his
tattered and grimy notebook, gloomily made an entry in it, and gloomily
said: “That makes you two games ahead.” Then he spurned the earth and
added: “I’m going to have a bicycle.”

The Twins looked at each other darkly; Erebus scowled, and a faint
frown broke the ineffable serenity of the Terror’s face.

“There’ll be no living with Wiggins now, he’ll be so cocky,” said
Erebus bitterly.

“Oh, no; he won’t,” said the Terror. “But we ought to have bicycles,
too. We want them badly. We never get really far from the village. We
always get stopped on the way—rats, or something.” And his guileless,
dreamy blue eyes swept the distant autumn hills with a look of
yearning.

“There are orchards over there where they don’t know us,” said Erebus
wistfully.

“We _must_ have bicycles. I’ve been thinking so for a long time,” said
the Terror.

“We must have the moon!” said Erebus with cold scorn.

“Bicycles aren’t so far away,” said the Terror sagely.

They moved swiftly across the common. Erebus poured forth a long
monotonous complaint about the lack of bicycles, which, for them, made
this Cosmic All a mere time-honored cheat. With ears impervious to his
sister’s vain lament, the Terror strode on serenely thoughtful,
pondering this pressing problem. Now and again, for obscure but
profound reasons, Wiggins spurned the earth and proceeded by leaps and
bounds.

Possibly it was the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the
Terror to say: “I’ve got a penny. We’ll go and get some bull’s-eyes.”

At any rate the monotonous plaint ceased.

They had returned on their steps across the common, and were nearing
the village, when they met three small boys. One of them carried a
kitten.

Erebus stopped short. “What are you going to do with that kitten, Billy
Beck?” she said.

“We be goin’ to drown ’im in the pond,” said Billy Beck in the
important tones of an executioner.

Erebus sprang; and the kitten was in her hands. “You’re not going to do
anything of the sort, you little beast!” she said.

The round red face of Billy Beck flushed redder with rage and
disappointment, and he howled:

“Gimme my kitty! Mother says she won’t ’ave ’im about the ’ouse, an’ I
could drown ’im.”

“You won’t have him,” said Erebus.

Billy Beck and his little brothers, robbed of their simple joy, burst
into blubbering roar of “It’s ourn! It ain’t yourn! It’s ourn!”

“It isn’t! A kitten isn’t any one’s to drown!” cried Erebus.

The Terror gazed at Erebus and Billy Beck with judicial eyes, the cold
personification of human justice. Erebus edged away from him ready to
fly, should human justice intervene actively. The Terror put his hand
in his pocket and fumbled. He drew out a penny, and looked at it
earnestly. He was weighing the respective merits of justice and
bull’s-eyes.

“Here’s a penny for your kitten. You can buy bull’s-eyes with it,” he
said with a sigh, and held out the coin.

A sudden greed sparkled in Billy Beck’s tearful eyes. “’E’s worth
more’n a penny—a kitty like ’im!” he blubbered.

“Not to drown. It’s all you’ll get,” said the Terror curtly. He tossed
the penny to Billy’s feet, turned on his heel and went back across the
common away from the village. Some of the brightness faded out of the
faces of Erebus and Wiggins.

“I wouldn’t have given him a penny. He was only going to drown the
kitten,” said Erebus in a grudging tone.

“It was his kitten. We couldn’t take it without paying for it,” said
the Terror coldly.

Erebus followed him, cuddling the kitten and talking to it as she went.

Presently Wiggins spurned the earth and said, “There ought to be a home
for kittens nobody wants—and puppies.”

The Terror stopped short, and said: “By Jove! There’s Aunt Amelia!”

Erebus burst into a bitter complaint of the stinginess of Aunt Amelia,
who had more money than all the rest of the family put together, and
yet never rained postal orders on deserving nieces and nephews, but
spent it all on horrid cats’ homes.

“That’s just it,” said the Terror in a tone of considerable animation.
“Come along; I want you to write a letter.”

“I’m not going to write any disgusting letter!” cried Erebus hotly.

“Then you’re not going to get any bicycle. Come on. I’ll look out the
words in the dictionary, and Wiggins can help because, seeing so much
of his father, he’s got into the way of using grammar. It’ll be useful.
Come on!”

They came on, Wiggins, as always, deeply impressed by the importance of
being a helper of the Twins, for they were in their fourteenth year,
and only ten brief wet summers had passed over his own tousled head,
Erebus clamoring to have her suddenly aroused curiosity gratified.
Practise had made the Terror’s ears impervious at will to his sister’s
questions, which were frequent and innumerable. Without a word of
explanation he led the way home; without a word he set her down at the
dining-room table with paper and ink before her, and sat down himself
on the opposite side of it, a dictionary in his hand and Wiggins by his
side.

Then he said coldly: “Now don’t make any blots, or you’ll have to do it
all over again.”

“I never make blots! It’s you that makes blots!” cried Erebus, ruffled.
“Mr. Etheridge says I write ever so much better than you do. Ever so
much better.”

“That’s why you’re writing the letter and not me,” said the Terror
coldly. “Fire away: ‘My dear Aunt Amelia’—I say, Wiggins, what’s the
proper words for ‘awfully keen’?”

“‘Keen’ is ‘interested’—I don’t know how many ‘r’s’ there are in
‘interested’—and ‘awfully’ is an awfully difficult word,” said Wiggins,
pondering.

The Terror looked up “interested” in the dictionary with a laborious
painfulness, and announced triumphantly that there was but a single “r”
in it; then he said, “What’s the right word for ‘awfully,’ Wiggins?
Buck up!”

“‘Tremendously,’” said Wiggins with the air of a successful Columbus.

“That’s it,” said the Terror. “‘My dear Aunt Amelia: I have often heard
that you are tremendously interested in cats’ homes’”—

“I should think you had!” said Erebus.

“Now don’t jabber, please; just stick to the writing,” said the Terror.
“I’ve got to make this letter a corker; and how can I think if you
jabber?”

Erebus made a hideous grimace and bent to her task.

“‘Little Deeping wants a cats’ home awfully’—no: ‘tremendously.’ I like
that word ‘tremendously’; it means something,” said the Terror.

“You’re jabbering yourself now,” said Erebus unpleasantly.

Ruffling his fair hair in the agony of composition, the Terror
continued: “‘The quantity of kittens that are drowned is horrible’—that
ought to fetch her; kittens are so much nicer than cats—‘and I have
been thinking’—Oughtn’t you to put in some stops?”

“I’m putting in stops—lots,” said Erebus contemptuously.

“‘I have been thinking—that if you wanted to have a cats’ home
here’—What’s the right word for ‘running a thing,’ Wiggins?”

Wiggins frowned deeply; a number of his freckles seemed to run into one
another.

“There is a word ‘overseer’—slaves have them,” he said cautiously.

The Terror sought that word painfully in the dictionary, spelled it
out, and continued: “‘I could overseer it for you. I have got my eye on
a building which would suit us tremendously well. But these things cost
money, and it would not be any use starting with less than thirty
pounds’—

“Thirty pounds! My goodness!” cried Erebus; and her eyes opened wide.

“We may as well go the whole hog,” said the Terror philosophically. “Go
on: ‘Or else just as the cats get to be happy and feel it was a real
home—’ What’s the word for ‘bust up,’ Wiggins?”

“Burst up,” said Wiggins without hesitation.

“No, no; not the grammar—the right word! Oh, I know; ‘go bankrupt’—‘it
might go bankrupt. So it you would like to have a cats’ home here and
send me some money, I will start it at once. Your affectionate nephew,
Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield.’ There!” said the Terror with a sigh of
relief.

“But you’ve left me out altogether,” said Erebus in a suddenly
aggrieved tone.

“I should jolly well think I had! You know that ever since you stayed
with Aunt Amelia, and taught her parrot to say ‘Dam,’ she won’t have
anything to do with you,” said the Terror firmly.

“There’s no pleasing some people,” said Erebus mournfully. “When I went
there the silly old parrot couldn’t say a thing; and when I came away,
he could say ‘Dam! Dam! Dam!’ from morning till night without making a
mistake.”

“It’s a word people don’t like,” said the Terror.

“Well, I and the parrot meant a dam in a river. I told Aunt Amelia so,”
said Erebus firmly.

“She might not believe you; she doesn’t know how truthfully we’ve been
brought up,” said the Terror. “Go on; sign my name to the letter.”

“That’s forgery. You ought to sign your name yourself,” said Erebus.

“No; you write my name better than I do; and it will go better with the
rest of the letter. Sign away,” said the Terror firmly.

Erebus signed away, and then she said: “But what good’s the money going
to be to us, if we’ve got to spend it on a silly old cats’ home? It
only means a lot of trouble.”

The guilelessness deepened and deepened on the Terror’s face. “Well,
you see, there aren’t many cats in Little Deeping—not enough to fill a
cats’ home decently,” he said slowly. “We should have to have bicycles
to collect them—from Great Deeping, and Muttle Deeping, and farther
off.”

Erebus gasped; and the light of understanding illumined her charming
face, as she cried in a tone of awe not untinctured with admiration:
“Well, you do think of things!”

“I have to,” said the Terror. “If I didn’t we should never have a
single thing.”

The Terror procured a stamp from Mrs. Dangerfield. He did not tell her
of the splendid scheme he was promoting; he only said that he had
thought he would write to Aunt Amelia. Mrs. Dangerfield was pleased
with him for his thought: she wished him to stand well with his
great-aunt, since she was a rich woman without children of her own. She
did not, indeed, suggest that the letter should be shown to her, though
she suspected that it contained some artless request. She thought it
better that the Terror should write to his great-aunt to make requests
rather than not write at all.

The letter posted, the Twins resumed the somewhat jerky tenor of their
lives. Erebus was full of speculations about the changes in their lives
those bicycles would bring about; she would pause in the very middle of
some important enterprise to discuss the rides they would take on them,
the orchards that those machines would bring within their reach. But
the Terror would have none of it; his calm philosophic mind forbade him
to discuss his chickens before they were hatched.

Since her philanthropy was confined entirely to cats, it is not
remarkable that philanthropy, and not intelligence, was the chief
characteristic of Lady Ryehampton. As the purport of her great-nephew’s
letter slowly penetrated her mind, a broad and beaming smile of
gratification spread slowly over her large round face; and as she
handed the letter to Miss Hendersyde, her companion, she cried in
unctuous tones: “The dear boy! So young, but already enthusiastic about
great things!”

Miss Hendersyde looked at her employer patiently; she foresaw that she
was going to have to struggle with her to save her from being once more
victimized. She had come to suspect anything that stirred Lady
Ryehampton to a noble phrase. Her eyes brightened with humorous
appreciation as she read the letter of Erebus; and when she came to the
end of it she opened her mouth to point out that Little Deeping was one
of the last places in England to need a cats’ home. Then she bethought
herself of the whole situation, shut her mouth with a little click, and
her face went blank.

Then she breathed a short silent prayer for forgiveness, smiled and
said warmly: “It’s really wonderful. You must have inspired him with
that enthusiasm yourself.”

“I suppose I must,” said Lady Ryehampton with an air of satisfaction.
“And I must be careful not to discourage him.”

Miss Hendersyde thought of the Terror’s face, his charming sympathetic
manners, and his darned knickerbockers. It was only right that some of
Lady Ryehampton’s money should go to him; indeed that money ought to be
educating him at a good school. It was monstrous that the great bulk of
it should be spent on cats; cats were all very well but human beings
came first. And the Terror was such an attractive human being.

“Yes, it is a dreadful thing to discourage enthusiasm,” she said
gravely.

Lady Ryehampton proceeded to discuss the question whether a cats’ home
could be properly started with thirty pounds, whether she had not
better send fifty. Miss Hendersyde made her conscience quite
comfortable by compromising: she said that she thought thirty was
enough to begin with; that if more were needful, Lady Ryehampton could
give it later. Lady Ryehampton accepted the suggestion.

Having set her employer’s hand to the plow, Miss Hendersyde saw to it
that she did not draw it back. Lady Ryehampton would spend money on
cats, but she could not be hurried in the spending of it. But Miss
Hendersyde kept referring to the Terror’s enterprise all that day and
the next morning, with the result that on the next afternoon Lady
Ryehampton signed the check for thirty pounds. At Miss Hendersyde’s
suggestion she drew the money in cash; and Miss Hendersyde turned it
into postal orders, for there is no bank at Little Deeping.

On the third morning the registered letter reached Colet House. The
excited Erebus, who had been watching for the postman, received it from
him, signed the receipt with trembling fingers, and dashed off with the
precious packet to the Terror in the orchard.

The Terror took it from her with flawless serenity and opened it
slowly.

But as he counted the postal orders, a faint flush covered his face;
and he said in a somewhat breathless tone: “Thirty pounds—well!”

Erebus executed a short but Bacchic dance which she invented on the
spur of that marvelous moment.

“It’s splendid—splendid!” she cried. “It’s the best thing you ever
thought of!”

The Terror put the postal orders back into the envelope, and put the
envelope into the breast pocket of his coat. A frown of the most
thoughtful consideration furrowed his brow. Then he said firmly: “The
first thing, to do is to get the bicycles. If once we’ve got them, no
one will take them away from us.”

“Of course they won’t,” said Erebus, with eager acceptance of his idea.

The breakfast-bell rang; and they went into the house, Erebus spurning
the earth as she went, in the very manner of Wiggins.

In the middle of breakfast the Terror said in a casual tone and with a
casual air, as if he was not greatly eager for the boon: “May we have
the cow-house for our very own, Mum?”

“Oh, Terror! Surely you don’t want to keep ferrets!” cried Mrs.
Dangerfield, who lived in fear of the Terror’s developing that
inevitable boyish taste.

“Oh, no; but if we had the cow-house to do what we liked with, I think
we could make a little pocket-money out of it.”

“I am afraid you’re growing terribly mercenary,” said his mother; then
she added with a sigh: “But I don’t wonder at it, seeing how hard up
you always are. You can have the cow-house. It’s right at the end of
the paddock—well away from the house—so that I don’t see that you can
do any harm with it whatever you do. But how are you going to make
pocket-money out of it?”

“Oh, I haven’t got it all worked out yet,” said the Terror quickly.
“But we’ll tell you all about it when we have. Thanks ever so much for
the cow-house.”

For the rest of breakfast he left the conversation to Erebus.

The Terror was blessed with a masterly prudence uncommon indeed in a
boy of his years. He changed but one of the six postal orders at Little
Deeping—that would make talk enough—and then, having begged a holiday
from the vicar, he took the train to Rowington, their market town, ten
miles away, taking Erebus with him. There he changed three more postal
orders; and then the Twins took their way to the bicycle shop, with
hearts that beat high.

The Terror set about the purchase in a very careful leisurely way
which, in any one else, would have exasperated the highly strung Erebus
to the very limits of endurance; but where the Terror was concerned she
had long ago learned the futility of exasperation. He began by an
exhaustive examination of every make of bicycle in the shop; and he
made it with a thoroughness that worried the eager bicycle-seller, one
of those smart young men who pamper a chin’s passion for receding by
letting a straggly beard try to cover it, till his nerves were all on
edge. Then the Terror, drawing a handful of sovereigns out of his
pocket and gazing at them lovingly, seemed unable to make up his mind
whether to buy two bicycles or one; and the bearded but chinless young
man perspired with his eloquent efforts to demonstrate the advantage of
buying two. He was quite weary when the persuaded Terror proceeded to
develop the point that there must be a considerable reduction in price
to the buyer of two bicycles. Then he made his offer: he would give
fourteen pounds for two eight-pound-ten bicycles. His serenity was
quite unruffled by the seller’s furious protests. Then the real
struggle began. The Terror came out of it with two bicycles, two lamps,
two bells and two baskets of a size to hold a cat; the seller came out
of it with fifteen pounds; and the triumphant Twins wheeled their
machines out of the shop.

The Terror stood still and looked thoughtfully up and down High Street.
Then he said: “We’ve saved the cats’ home quite two pounds.”

“Yes,” said Erebus.

“And it’s made me awfully hungry and thirsty doing it,” said the
Terror.

“It must have—arguing like that,” said Erebus quickly; and her eyes
brightened as she caught his drift.

“Well, I think the home ought to pay for refreshment. It’s a long ride
home,” said the Terror.

“Of course it ought,” said Erebus with decision.

Without more ado they wheeled their bicycles down the street to a
confectioner’s shop, propped them up carefully against the curb, and
entered the shop with an important moneyed air.

At the end of his fourth jam tart the Terror said: “Of course overseers
have a salary.”

“Of course they do,” said Erebus.

“That settles the matter of pocket-money,” said the Terror. “We’ll have
sixpence a week each.”

“Only sixpence?” said Erebus in a tone of the liveliest surprise.

“Well, you see, there are the bicycles. I don’t think we can make it
more than sixpence. And I tell you what: we shall have to keep
accounts. I’ll buy an account-book. You’re very good at
arithmetic—you’ll like keeping accounts,” said the Terror suavely.

Since her mouth was full of luscious jam tart, Erebus did not feel that
it would be delicate at that moment to protest. Therefore on leaving
the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature
prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the
stationer’s he went to an ironmonger’s and bought a saw, a brace, a
gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long
needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had
learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After
their visit to the confectioner’s they rode rather sluggishly.

They were not hungry, far from it, at the moment; but half-way home the
Terror turned out of the main road into the lanes, and they paused at a
quiet orchard, in a lovely unguarded spot, and filled the cat-basket on
Erebus’ bicycle with excellent apples. The tools had been packed into
the Terror’s basket. They did not disturb the farmer’s wife at the busy
dinner-hour; the Terror threw the apples over the orchard hedge to
Erebus.

As he remembered his bicycle he said dreamily: “I shouldn’t wonder if
these bicycles didn’t pay for themselves in time.”

“I said there were orchards out here where they didn’t know us,” said
Erebus, biting into a Ribston pippin.

They reached home in time for lunch and locked away their bicycles in
the cow-house. At lunch they were reticent about their triumphs of the
morning.

After lunch they went to the cow-house and took measurements. It had
long been unoccupied by cows and needed little cleaning. It was quite
suitable to their purpose, a brick building with a slate roof and of a
size to hold two cows. The measurements made, they went, with an
important moneyed air, down to the village carpenter, the only timber
merchant in the neighborhood, and bought planks from him. There was
some discussion before his idea about the price of planks and that of
the Terror were in exact accord; and as he took the money he said, with
some ruefulness, that he was a believer in small profits and quick
returns. Since immediate delivery was part of the bargain, he forthwith
put the planks on a hand-cart and wheeled them up to Colet House. The
Twins, eager to be at work, helped him.

For the rest of the day the Terror applied his indisputable
constructive genius to the creation of cat-hutches. That evening Erebus
wrote his warm letter of thanks to Lady Ryehampton.

The next morning, with a womanly disregard of obligation, Erebus
proposed that they should forthwith mount their bicycles and sally
forth on a splendid foray. The Terror would not hear of it.

“No,” he said firmly. “We’re going to get the cats’ home finished
before we use those bicycles at all. Then nobody can complain.”

He lost no time setting to work on it, and worked till it was time to
go down to the vicarage for his morning’s lessons with the vicar. He
set to work again as soon as he returned; he worked all the afternoon;
and he saw to it that Erebus worked, too.

In the middle of the afternoon Wiggins came. He had spent a fruitless
hour lying in wait on the common to scalp the Twins as they sallied
forth into the world, and then had come to see what had kept them
within their borders. He was deeply impressed by the sight of the
bicycles, but not greatly surprised: his estimation of the powers of
his friends was too high for any of their exploits to surprise him
greatly. But he was somewhat aggrieved that they should have obtained
their bicycles before he had obtained his. None the less he helped them
construct the cats’ home with enthusiasm.

For three strenuous days they persisted in their untiring effort. So
much sustained carpentering was hard on their hands; many small pieces
were chipped out of them. But their spirits never flagged; and by
sunset on the third day they had constructed accommodation for thirty
cats. It may be that the wooden bars of the hutches were not all of the
same breadth, but at any rate they were all of the same thickness: and
it would be a slim cat, indeed, that would squirm through them.

At sunset on the third day the exultant trio gazed round the
transformed cow-house with shining triumphant eyes; then Erebus said
firmly: “What we want now is cats.”

CHAPTER IV
AND THE VISIT OF INSPECTION

Cats did not immediately flow in, though the Twins, riding round the
countryside on their bicycles, spread the information that they were
willing to afford a home to such of those necessary animals as their
owners no longer needed. They had, indeed, one offer of a cat suffering
from the mange; but the Terror rejected it, saying coldly to its owner
that theirs was a home, not a hospital.

The impatient Erebus was somewhat vexed with him for rejecting it: she
pointed out that even a mangy cat was a beginning.

Slowly they grew annoyed that the home on which they had lavished such
strenuous labor remained empty; and at last the Terror said: “Look
here: I’m going to begin with kittens.”

“How will you get kittens, if you can’t get cats? Everybody likes
kittens. It’s only when they grow up and stop playing that they don’t
want them,” said Erebus with her coldest scorn.

“I’m going to buy them,” said the Terror firmly. “I’m going to give
threepence each for kittens that can just lap. We don’t want kittens
that can’t lap. They’d be too much trouble.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Erebus, brightening.

“It’ll stop them drowning kittens all right. The only thing I’m not
sure about is the accounts.”

“You’re always bothering about those silly old accounts!” said Erebus
sharply.

She resented having had to enter in their penny ledger the items of
their expenditure with conspicuous neatness under his critical eye.

“Well, I don’t think the kittens ought to go down in the accounts. Aunt
Amelia is so used to cats’ homes that are given their cats. She’s told
me all about it: how people write and ask for their cats to be taken
in.”

“_I_ don’t want them to go down. It makes all the less accounts to
keep,” said Erebus readily.

“Well, that’s settled,” said the Terror cheerfully.

Once more the Twins rode round the countryside, spreading abroad the
tidings of their munificent offer of threepence a head for kittens who
could just lap.

But kittens did not immediately flow in; and the complaints of the
impatient Erebus grew louder and louder. There was no doubt that she
loved a grievance; and even more she loved making no secret of that
grievance to those about her. Since she could only discuss this
grievance with the Terror and Wiggins, they heard enough about it.
Indeed, her complaints were at last no small factor in her patient
brother’s resolve to take action; and he called her and Wiggins to a
council.

He opened the discussion by saying: “We’ve got to have kittens, or
cats. We can’t have any pocket-money for ‘overseering’ till there’s
something to overseer.”

“And that splendid cats’ home we’ve made stopping empty all the time,”
said Erebus in her most bitterly aggrieved tone.

“I don’t mind that. I’m sick of hearing about it,” said the Terror
coldly. “But I do want pocket-money; and besides, Aunt Amelia will soon
be wanting to know what’s happening to the home; and she’ll make a fuss
if there aren’t any cats in it. So we must have cats.”

“Well, I tell you what it is: we must take cats. There are cats all
over the country; and when we’re out bicycling, a good way from home,
we could easily pick up one or two at a time and bring them back with
us. We ought to be able to get four a day, counting kittens; and in
eight days the home would be full and two over.”

“And we should be prosecuted for stealing them,” said the Terror
coldly.

“But they’d be ever so much better off in the home, properly looked
after and fed,” protested Erebus.

“That wouldn’t make any difference. No; it’s no good trying to get them
that way,” said the Terror in a tone of finality.

“Well, they won’t come of themselves,” said Erebus.

“They would with valerian,” said Wiggins.

“Who’s Valerian?” said Erebus.

“It isn’t a who. It’s a drug at the chemist’s,” said Wiggins. “I’ve
been talking to my father about cats a good deal lately, and he says if
you put valerian on a rag and drag it along the ground, cats will
follow it for miles.”

“Your father seems to know everything—such a lot of useful things as
well as higher mathematics,” said the Terror.

“That’s why he has a European reputation,” said Wiggins; and he spurned
the earth.

That afternoon the Twins bicycled into Rowington and bought a bottle of
the enchanting drug. Just before they reached the village, on their way
home, the Terror produced a rag with a piece of string tied to it,
poured some valerian on it and trailed it after his bicycle through the
village to his garden gate.

The result demonstrated the accuracy of the scientific knowledge of the
father of Wiggins. All that evening and far into the night twelve cats
fought clamorously round the house of the Dangerfields.

The next day the Terror turned the cats’ home into a cat-trap. He cut a
hole in the bottom of its door large enough to admit a cat and fitted
it with a hanging flap which a cat would readily push open from the
outside, but lacked the intelligence to raise from the inside. He was
late finishing it, and went from it to his dinner.

They had just come to the end of the simple meal when they heard a ring
at the back door; and old Sarah came in to say that Polly Cotteril had
come from the village with some kittens. The Twins excused themselves
politely to their mother, and hurried to the kitchen to find that Polly
had brought no less than five small kittens in a basket.

Forthwith the Terror filled a saucer with milk and applied the lapping
test. Four of the kittens lapped the milk somewhat feebly, but they
lapped. The fifth would not lap. It only mewed. Therefore the Terror
took only four of the kittens, giving Polly a shilling for them. The
fifth he returned to her, bidding her bring it back when it could lap.

They took the four kittens down to the cats’ home; and since they were
so small, they put them in one hutch for warmth, with a saucer of milk
to satisfy their hunger during the night.

“Now we’ve got these kittens, we needn’t bother about getting cats,”
said the Terror as they returned to the house. “And I’m glad it is
kittens and not cats. Kittens eat less.”

“Then you’ve had all the trouble of making that little door for
nothing,” said Erebus.

“It’s an emergency exit—like the theaters have—only it’s an entrance,”
said the Terror. “But thank goodness, we’ve begun at last; now we can
have salaries for ‘overseering’.”

During the course of the next week they added seven more small kittens
to their stock; and it seemed good to the Terror to inform Lady
Ryehampton that the home was already constructed and in process of
occupation. Accordingly Erebus wrote a letter, by no means devoid of
enthusiasm, informing her that it already held eleven inmates, “saved
from the awful death of drowning.” Lady Ryehampton replied promptly in
a spirit of warm gratification that they had been so quick starting it.

But with eleven inmates in the home the Twins presently found
themselves grappling earnestly with the food problem and the
account-book.

The Terror was not unfitted for financial operations. Till they were
six years old the Twins had lived luxuriously at Dangerfield Hall, in
Monmouth, with toys beyond the dreams of Alnaschar. Then their father
had fallen into the hands of a firm of gambling stock-brokers, had
along with them lost nearly all his money, and presently died, leaving
Mrs. Dangerfield with a very small income indeed. All the while since
his death it had been a hard struggle to make both ends meet; and the
Twins had had many a lesson in learning to do without the desires of
their hearts.

But their desires were strong; the wits of the Terror were not weak;
and taking one month with another the Twins had as much pocket-money as
the bulk of the children of the well-to-do. But it did not come in the
way of a regular allowance; it had to be obtained by diplomacy or work;
and the processes of getting it had given the Terror the liveliest
interest in financial matters. He was resolved that the cats’ home and
the wages of “overseering” should last as long as possible.

But it soon grew clear to him that, with milk at threepence halfpenny a
quart, the kittens would soon drink themselves out of house and home.

He discussed the matter with Erebus and Wiggins; and they agreed with
him that milk spelled ruin. But they could see no way of reducing the
price of milk; and they were sure that it was the necessary food for
growing kittens.

Their faces were somewhat gloomy at the end of the discussion; and a
heavy silence had fallen on them. Then of a sudden the face of the
Terror brightened; and he said with a touch of triumph in his tone:
“I’ve got it; we’ll feed them on skim-milk.”

“They feed pigs on skim-milk, not kittens,” said Erebus scornfully.

That was indeed the practise at Little Deeping. Butter-making was its
chief industry; and the skim-milk went to the pigs.

“If it fattens pigs, it will fatten kittens,” said the Terror firmly.

“But how can we get it? They don’t sell it about here,” said Erebus.
“And you know what they are: if Granfeytner didn’t sell skim-milk,
nobody’s going to sell skim-milk to-day.”

“Oh, yes: old Stubbs will sell it,” said the Terror confidently.

“Old Stubbs! But he hates us worse than any one!” cried Erebus.

“Oh, yes; he doesn’t like us. But he’s awfully keen on money; every one
says so. And he won’t care whose money he gets so long as he gets it.
Come on; we’ll go and talk to him about it,” said the Terror.

The Twins went firmly across the common to the house of farmer Stubbs
and knocked resolutely. The maid, who was well aware that her master
and the Twins were not on friendly terms, admitted them with some
hesitation. The Twins had never entered the farmer’s house before,
though they had often entered his orchard; and they felt slightly
uncomfortable. They found the parlor into which they were shown
uncommonly musty.

Presently Mr. Stubbs came to them, pulling doubtfully at the Newgate
fringe that ran bristling under his chin, with a look of deep suspicion
in his small, ferrety, red-rimmed eyes. Even when he learned that they
had come on business, his face did not brighten till the Terror
incidentally dropped a sovereign on the floor and talked of cash
payments. Then his face shone; he made the admission, cautiously, that
he might be induced to sell skim-milk; and then they came to the
discussion of prices. Mr. Stubbs wanted to see skim-milk in quarts; the
Terror could only see it in pails; and this difference of point of view
nearly brought the negotiations to an abrupt end twice. But the
Terror’s suavity prevented a complete break; and in the end they struck
a bargain that he should have as much skim-milk as he required at
threepence halfpenny the pailful.

In the course of the next fortnight they admitted twelve more kittens
to the home; and the Terror had yet another idea. Milk alone seemed an
insufficient diet for them; and he approached the village baker on the
matter of stale bread. There were more negotiations; and in the end the
Terror made a contract with the baker for a supply of it at nearly his
own price. Now he fed the kittens on bread and milk; they throve on it;
and it went further than plain milk.

The Twins enjoyed but little leisure. They had been busy filling
certain shelves, which they had fixed up above the cat-hutches, with
the best apples the more peaceful and sparsely populated parts of the
countryside afforded. But what spare time he had the Terror devoted to
a great feat of painting. He painted in white letters on a black
board:—

LADY RYEHAMPTON’S CATS’ HOME

The letters varied somewhat in size, and they were not everything that
could be desired in the matter of shape; but both Erebus and Wiggins
agreed that it was extraordinarily effective, and that if ever their
aunt saw it she would be deeply gratified.

With this final open advertisement of their enterprise ready to be
fixed up, they felt that the time had come to take their mother
formally into their confidence. She had learned of the formation of the
cats’ home from old Sarah; and several of her neighbors had talked to
her about it, and seemed surprised by her inability to give them
details about its ultimate scope and purpose, for it had excited the
interest of the neighborhood and was a frequent matter of discussion
for fully a week. She had explained to them that she never interfered
with the Twins when they were engaged in any harmless employment, and
that she was only too pleased that they had found a harmless employment
that filled as much of their time as did the cats’ home. Moreover, the
Terror had told her that they did not wish her to see it till it had
been brought to its finished state and was in thorough working order.
Therefore she had no idea of its size or of the cost of its
construction. Like every one else she supposed it to be a ramshackle
affair of makeshifts constructed from old planks and hen-coops.

Moreover she had not learned that the Twins possessed bicycles, for
they were judicious in their use. They were careful to sally forth when
she was taking her siesta after lunch; they went across the common and
came back across the common and their neighbors saw them riding very
little.

When at last she was invited to come to see their finished work, she
accepted the invitation with becoming delight, and made her inspection
of the home with a becoming seriousness and a growing surprise. She
expressed her admiration of its convenience, its cleanliness, and the
extensive scale on which it was being run. She agreed with the Terror
that to have saved so many kittens from the awful death of drowning was
a great work. But she asked no questions, not even how it was that the
cats’ home was fragrant with the scent of hidden apples. She knew that
an explanation, probably of an admirable plausibility, was about to be
given her.

Then at the end of her inspection, the Terror said carelessly: “The
bicycles are for bringing kittens from a distance, of course.”

“What? Are those your bicycles?” cried Mrs. Dangerfield. “But wherever
did you get the money from to buy them?”

“Aunt Amelia found the money,” said the Terror. “You know she’s very
keen—tremendously interested in cats’ homes. She thinks we are doing a
great work, as well as you.”

Mrs. Dangerfield’s beautiful eyes were very wide open; and she said
rather breathlessly: “You got money out of your Aunt Amelia for a cats’
home in Little Deeping?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Terror carelessly.

Mrs. Dangerfield turned away hastily to hide her working face: she
_must_ not laugh at their great-aunt before the Twins. She bit her
tongue with a firmness that filled her eyes with tears. It was painful;
but it enabled her to complete her inspection with the required
gravity.

The Terror fixed up the board above the door of the home; and it awoke
a fresh interest among their neighbors in their enterprise. Several of
them, including the squire and the vicar, made visits of inspection to
it; and Wiggins brought his father. All of them expressed an admiration
of the institution and of the methods on which it was conducted. To one
another they expressed an unfavorable opinion of the intelligence of
Lady Ryehampton.

The home was now working quite smoothly; and with a clear conscience
the Twins drew their salary for “overseering.” It provided them with
many of the less expensive desires of their hearts. Now and again
Erebus, mindful of the fact that they had still a little more than ten
pounds left out of the original thirty, urged that it should be raised
to a shilling a week. But the Terror would not consent: he said their
salaries for “overseeing” would naturally be much higher, and that they
would have charged for their work in constructing the home, if it had
not been for the bicycles. As it was, they were bound to work off the
price of the bicycles. Besides, he added with a philosophical air,
six-pence a week for a year was much better than a shilling a week for
six months.

Lady Ryehampton was duly informed that the home now contained
twenty-three inmates; and the children of Great Deeping, Muttle
(probably a corruption of Middle) Deeping, and Little Deeping were
informed that for the time being the home was full. Erebus clamored to
have its full complement of thirty kittens made up; but the Terror
maintained very firmly his contention that twenty-three was quite
enough. Everything was working smoothly. Then one evening just before
dinner there came a loud ringing at the front-door bell.

It was so loud and so importunate that with one accord the Twins dashed
for the door; and Erebus opened it. On the steps stood their Uncle
Maurice; and he wore a harried air.

“Why, it’s Uncle Maurice!” cried Erebus springing upon him and
embracing him warmly.

“It’s Uncle Maurice, mother!” cried the Terror.

“It may be your Uncle Maurice, but I can tell you he’s by no means sure
of it himself! Is it my head or my heels I’m standing on?” said Sir
Maurice faintly, and he wiped his burning brow.

On his words there came up the steps the porter of Little Deeping
station, laden with wicker baskets. From the baskets came the sound of
mewing.

“Whatever is it?” cried Mrs. Dangerfield, kissing her brother.

“Cats for the cats’ home!” said Sir Maurice Falconer.

He waved his startled kinsfolk aside while the baskets were ranged in a
neat row on the floor of the hall, then he paid the porter, feebly, and
shut the door after him with an air of exhaustion. He leaned back
against it and said:

“I had a sudden message—Aunt Amelia is going to pay a surprise visit to
this inf—this cats’ home these little friends are pretending to run for
her. I saw that there was no time to lose—there must be a cats’ home
with cats in it—or she’d cut them both out of her will. I bought
cats—all over London—they’ve been with me ever since—yowling—they
yowled in the taxi—all over London—they traveled down as far as
Rowington with me and an old gentleman—a high-spirited old
gentleman—yowling—not only the cats but the old gentleman, too—-and
they traveled from Rowington to Little Deeping with me and two maiden
ladies—timid maiden ladies!—yowling! But come on: we’ve got to make a
cats’ home at once!” And he picked up one of the plaintive baskets with
the air of a man desperately resolved to act on the instant or perish.

“But we’ve got a cats’ home—only it’s full of kittens,” said Erebus
gently.

“Good heavens! Do you mean to say I’ve gone through this nightmare for
nothing?” cried Sir Maurice, dropping the basket.

“Oh, no; it was awfully good of you!” said the Terror with swift
politeness. “The cats will come in awfully useful.”

“They’ll make the home look so much more natural. All kittens isn’t
natural,” said Erebus.

“And they’ll be such a pleasant surprise for Aunt Amelia. She was only
expecting kittens,” said the Terror.

“What?” howled Sir Maurice. “Do you mean to say I’ve parleyed for hours
with a high-spirited gentleman and two—two—timid maiden ladies, just to
give your Aunt Amelia a pleasant surprise?”

He sank into a chair and wiped his beaded brow feebly. “I ought to have
had more confidence in you,” he said faintly. “I ought to know your
powers by now. And I did. I know well that any people who have dealings
with you are likely to get a surprise; but I thought your Aunt Amelia
was going to get it; and I’ve got it myself.”

“But you didn’t think that we would humbug Aunt Amelia?” said the
Terror in a pained tone and with the most virtuous air.

“Gracious, no!” cried Sir Maurice. “I only thought that you might
possibly induce her to humbug herself.”

The Twins looked at him doubtfully: there seemed to them more in his
words than met the ear.

“You must be wanting your dinner dreadfully,” said Mrs. Dangerfield.
“And I’m afraid there’s very little for you. But I’ll make you an
omelette.”

“I can not dine amid this yowling,” said Sir Maurice firmly, waving his
hand over the vocal baskets. “These animals must be placed out of
hearing, or I shan’t be able to eat a morsel.”

“We’ll put them in the cats’ home,” said the Terror quickly. “I’ll just
put on a pair of thick gloves. Wiggins’ father—he’s a higher
mathematician, you know, and understands all this kind of thing—says
that hydrophobia is very rare among cats. But it’s just as well to be
careful with these London ones.”

“Oh, lord, I never thought of that,” said Sir Maurice with a shudder.
“I’ve been risking my life as well!”

The Terror put on the gloves and lighted a lantern. He and Erebus
helped carry the cats down to the home; and he put them into hutches.
Their uncle was much impressed by the arrangement of the home.

The cats disposed of, Sir Maurice at last recovered his wonted
self-possession—a self-possession as admirable as the serenity of the
Terror, but not so durable. At dinner he reduced his appreciative
kinsfolk to the last exhaustion by his entertaining account of his
parleying with his excited fellow travelers. He could now view it with
an impartial mind. After dinner he accompanied the Terror to the cats’
home and helped him feed the newcomers with scraps. The rest of the
evening passed peacefully and pleasantly.

If the Twins had a weakness, it was that their desire for thoroughness
sometimes caused them to overdo things; and it was on the way to bed
that the brilliant idea flashed into the mind of Erebus.

She stopped short on the stairs, and with an air of inspiration said:
“We ought to have more cats.”

The Terror stopped short too, pondering the suggestion; then he said:
“By Jove, yes. This would be a good time to work that valerian dodge.
And it would mean that we should have to use our bicycles again for the
good of the home. The more we can say that we’ve used them for it, the
less any one can grumble about them.”

“Most cats are shut up now,” said Erebus.

“Yes; we must catch the morning cats. They get out quite early—when
people start out to work,” said the Terror.

Among the possessions of the Twins was an American clock fitted with an
alarm. The Terror set it for half past five. At that hour it awoke him
with extreme difficulty. He awoke Erebus with extreme difficulty. Five
minutes later they were munching bread and butter in the kitchen to
stay themselves against the cold of the bitter November morning; then
they sallied forth, equipped with rags, string and the bottle of
valerian.

They bicycled to Muttle Deeping. There the Terror poured valerian on
one of the rags and tied it to the bicycle of Erebus. Forthwith she
started to trail it to the cats’ home. He rode on to Great Deeping and
trailed a rag from there through Little Deeping to the cats’ home. When
he reached it he found Erebus’ bicycle in its corner; and when, after
strengthening the trail through the little hanging door with a rag
freshly wetted with the drug, he returned to the house, he found that
she was already in bed again. He made haste back to bed himself.

It had been their intention to go down to the home before breakfast and
put the cats they had attracted to it into hutches. But they slept on
till breakfast was ready; and the fragrance of the coffee and bacon
lured them straight into the dining-room. After all, as Erebus told the
hesitating Terror, there was plenty of time to deal with the new cats,
for Aunt Amelia could not reach Little Deeping before eleven o’clock.
They could not escape from the home. The Twins therefore devoted their
most careful attention to their breakfast with their minds quite at
ease.

Then there came a ring at the front door; and still their minds were at
ease, for they took it that it was a note or a message from a neighbor.
Then Sarah threw open the dining-room door, said “Please, ma’am, it’s
Lady Ryehampton”; and their Aunt Amelia stood, large, round and
formidable, on the threshold. Behind her stood Miss Hendersyde looking
very anxious.

There was a heavy frown on Lady Ryehampton’s stern face; and when they
rose to welcome her, she greeted them with severe stiffness. To Erebus,
the instructor of parrots, she gave only one finger.

Then in deep portentous tones she said: “I came down to pay a surprise
visit to your cats’ home. I always do. It’s the only way I can make
sure that the poor dear things are receiving proper treatment.” The
frown on her face grew rhadamanthine. “And last night I saw your Uncle
Maurice at the station—he did not see me—with cats, London cats, in
baskets. On the labels of two of the baskets I read the names of
well-known London cat-dealers. I do not support a cats’ home at Little
Deeping for London cats bought at London dealers. Why have they been
brought here?”

Sir Maurice opened his mouth to explain; but the Terror was before him:

“It was Uncle Maurice’s idea,” he said. “He didn’t think that there
ought only to be kittens in a cats’ home. We didn’t mind ourselves; and
of course, if he puts cats in it, he’ll have to subscribe to the home.
What we have started it for was kittens—to save them from the awful
death of drowning. We wrote and told you. And we’ve saved quite a lot.”

His limpid blue eyes were wells of candor.

Lady Ryehampton uttered a short snort; and her eyes flashed.

“Do you mean to tell me that your Uncle Maurice is fond enough of cats
to bring them all the way from London to a cats’ home at Deeping? He
hates cats, and always has!” she said fiercely.

“Of course, I hate cats,” said Sir Maurice with cold severity. “But I
hate children’s being brought up to be careless a great deal more. A
cats’ home is not a cats’ home unless it has cats in it; and you’ve
been encouraging these children to grow up careless by calling a
kittens’ home a cats’ home. If you will interfere in their up-bringing,
you have no right to do your best to get them into careless ways.”

Taken aback at suddenly finding herself on the defensive Lady
Ryehampton blinked at him somewhat owlishly: “That’s all very well,”
she said in a less severe tone. “But is there a kittens’ home at all—a
kittens’ home with kittens in it? That’s what I want to know.”

“But we wrote and told you how many kittens we had in the cats’ home.
You don’t think we’d deceive you, Aunt Amelia?” said the Terror in a
deeply injured tone and with a deeply injured air.

“There! I told you that if he said he had kittens in it, there would
be,” said Miss Hendersyde with an air of relief.

“Of course there’s a cats’ home with kittens in it!” said Mrs.
Dangerfield with some heat. “The Terror wouldn’t lie to you!”

“Hyacinth is incapable of deceit!” cried Sir Maurice splendidly.

The Terror did his best to look incapable of deceit; and it was a very
good best.

In some confusion Lady Ryehampton began to stammer: “Well, of
c-c-c-course, if there’s a c-c-cats’ home—but Sir Maurice’s senseless
interference—”

“Senseless interference! Do you call saving children from careless
habits senseless interference?” cried Sir Maurice indignantly.

“You had no business to interfere without consulting me,” said Lady
Ryehampton. Then, with a return of suspicion, she said: “But I want to
see this cats’ home—now!”

“I’ll take you at once,” said the Terror quickly, and politely he
opened the door.

They all went, Mrs. Dangerfield snatching a hooded cloak, Sir Maurice
his hat and coat from pegs in the hall as they went through it. When
they came into the paddock their ears became aware of a distant
high-pitched din; and the farther they went down it the louder and more
horrible grew the din.

Over the broad round face of Lady Ryehampton spread an expression of
suspicious bewilderment; Mrs. Dangerfield’s beautiful eyes were wide
open in an anxious wonder; the piquant face of Erebus was set in a
defiant scowl; and Sir Maurice looked almost as anxious as Mrs.
Dangerfield. Only the Terror was serene.

“Surely those brutes I brought haven’t got out of their cages,” said
Sir Maurice.

“Oh, no; those must be visiting cats,” said the Terror calmly.

“Visiting cats?” said Lady Ryehampton and Sir Maurice together.

“Yes: we encourage the cats about here to come to the home so that if
ever they are left homeless they will know where to come,” said the
Terror, looking at Lady Ryehampton with eyes that were limpid wells of
guilelessness.

“Now that’s a very clever idea!” she exclaimed. “I must tell the
managers of my other homes about it and see whether they can’t do it,
too. But what are these cats doing?”

“It sounds as if they were quarreling,” said the Terror calmly.

It did sound as if they were quarreling; at the door of the home the
din was ear-splitting, excruciating, fiendish. It was as if the voices
of all the cats in the county were raised in one piercing battle-song.

The Terror bade his kinsfolk stand clear; then he threw open the
door—wide. Cats did not come out.… A large ball of cats came out,
gyrating swiftly in a haze of flying fur. Ten yards from the door it
dissolved into its component parts, and some thirty cats tore, yelling,
to the four quarters of the heavens.

After that stupendous battle-song the air seemed thick with silence.

The Terror broke it; he said in a tone of doubting sadness: “I
sometimes think it sets a bad example to the kittens.”

Sir Maurice turned livid in the grip of some powerful emotion. He
walked hurriedly round to the back of the home to conceal it from human
ken. There with his handkerchief stuffed into his mouth, he leaned
against the wall, and shook and rocked and kicked the irresponsive
bricks feebly.

But the serene Terror firmly ushered Lady Ryehampton into the home with
an air of modest pride. A little dazed, she entered upon a scene of
perfect, if highly-scented, peace. Twenty-three kittens and eight cats
sat staring earnestly through bars of their hutches in a dead
stillness. Their eyes were very bright. By a kindly provision of nature
they had been able, in the darkness, to follow the fortunes of that
vociferous fray.

In three minutes Lady Ryehampton had forgotten the battle-song. She was
charmed, lost in admiration of the home, of the fatness and healthiness
of the blinking kittens, the neatness and the cleanliness. She gushed
enthusiastic approbation. “To think,” she cried, “that you have done
this yourself! A boy of thirteen!”

“Erebus did quite as much as I did,” said the Terror quickly.

“And Wiggins helped a lot. He’s a friend of ours,” said Erebus no less
quickly.

Lady Ryehampton’s face softened to Erebus—to Erebus, the instructor of
parrots.

Sir Maurice joined them. His eyes were red and moist, as if they had
but now been full of tears.

“It’s a very creditable piece of work,” he said in a tone of warm
approval.

Lady Ryehampton looked round the home once more; and her face fell. She
said uneasily: “But you must be heavily in debt.”

“In debt?” said the Terror. “Oh, no; we couldn’t be. Mother would hate
us to be in debt.”

“I thought—a cats’ home—oh, but I _am_ glad I brought my check-book
with me!” cried Lady Ryehampton.

She could not understand why Sir Maurice uttered a short sharp howl.
She did not know that the Terror dug him sharply in the ribs as Erebus
kicked him joyfully on the ankle-bone; that they had simultaneously
realized that the future of the home, the wages of “overseering,” were
secure.

CHAPTER V
AND THE SACRED BIRD

Lady Ryehampton did not easily tear herself away from the home; and the
Terror did all he could to foster her interest in it. The crowning
effect was the feeding of the kittens, which was indeed a very pretty
sight, since twenty-three kittens could not feed together without many
pauses to gambol and play. The only thing about the home which was not
quite to the liking of Lady Ryehampton was the board over the door. She
liked it as an advertisement of her philanthropy; but she did not like
its form; she preferred her name in straighter letters, all of them of
the same size. At the same time she did not like to hurt the feelings
of the Terror by showing lack of appreciation of his handiwork.

Then she had a happy thought, and said: “By the way, I think that the
board over the door ought to be uniform—the same as the boards over the
entrances of my other cats’ homes. The lettering of them is always in
gold.”

“All right. I’ll get some gold paint, and paint them over,” said the
Terror readily, anxious to humor in every way this dispenser of
salaries.

“No, no, I can’t give you the trouble of doing it all over again,” said
Lady Ryehampton quickly. “I’ll have a board made, and painted in
London—exactly like the board of my cats’ home at Tysleworth—and sent
down to you to fix up.”

“Thanks very much,” said the Terror. “It will save me a great deal of
trouble. Painting isn’t nearly so easy as it looks.”

Lady Ryehampton breathed a sigh of satisfaction. She invited them all
to lunch at The Plough, where she had stayed the night; and Mrs.
Pittaway racked her brains and strained all the resources of her simple
establishment to make the lunch worthy of its giver. As she told her
neighbors later, nobody knew what it was to have a lady of title in the
house. The Twins enjoyed the lunch very much indeed; and even Erebus
was very quiet for two hours after it.

Lady Ryehampton came to tea at Colet House; she paid a last gloating
visit to the cats’ home, wrote a check for ten pounds payable to the
Terror, and in a state of the liveliest satisfaction, took the train to
London.

Sir Maurice stayed till a later train, for he had no great desire to
travel with Lady Ryehampton. Besides, the question what was to be done
with the eight cats he had brought with him, remained to be settled. He
felt that he could not saddle the Twins with their care and up-keep,
since only his unfounded distrust had brought them to the cats’ home.
At the same time he could not bring himself to travel with them any
more.

They discussed the matter. Erebus was inclined to keep the cats,
declaring that it would be so nice to grow their own kittens. The
Terror, looking at the question from the cold monetary point of view,
wished to be relieved of them. In the end it was decided that Sir
Maurice should make terms with one of the dealers from whom he had
bought them, and that the Twins should forward them to that dealer.

The next day the Twins discussed what should be done with this
unexpected ten pounds which Lady Ryehampton had bestowed on the home.
Erebus was for at once increasing their salaries to three shillings a
week. The cautious Terror would only raise them to ninepence each.
Then, keeping rather more than four pounds for current expenses, he put
fifteen pounds in the Post-Office Savings Bank. He thought it a wise
thing to do: it prevented any chance of their spending a large sum on
some sudden overwhelming impulse.

Then for some time their lives moved in a smooth uneventful groove. The
cats were despatched to the London dealer; the neatly painted board
came from Lady Ryehampton and was fixed up in the place of the Terror’s
handiwork; they did their lessons in the morning; they rode out, along
with Wiggins who now had his bicycle, in the afternoons.

Then came December; and early in the month they began to consider the
important matter of their mother’s Christmas present.

One morning they were down at the home, giving the kittens their
breakfasts and discussing it gravely. The kittens were indulging in
engaging gambols before falling into the sleep of repletion which
always followed their meals; but the Twins saw them with unsmiling
eyes, for the graver matter wholly filled their minds. They could see
their way to saving up seven or eight shillings for that present; and
so large a sum must be expended with judgment. It must procure
something not only useful but also attractive.

They had discussed at some length the respective advantages and
attractions of a hair-brush and a tortoise-shell comb to set in the
hair, when Erebus, frowning thoughtfully, said: “I know what she really
wants though.”

“What’s that?” said the Terror sharply.

“It’s one of those fur stoles in the window of Barker’s at Rowington,”
said Erebus. “I heard her sigh when she looked at it. She used to have
beautiful furs once—when father was alive. But she sold them—to get
things for us, I suppose. Uncle Maurice told me so—at least I got it
out of him.”

The Terror was frowning thoughtfully, too; and he said in a tone of
decision: “How much is that stole?”

“Oh, it’s no good thinking about it—it’s three guineas,” said Erebus
quickly.

“That’s a mort o’ money, as old Stubbs says,” said the Terror; and the
frown deepened on his brow.

“I wonder if we could get it?” said Erebus, and a faint hopefulness
dawned in her eyes as she looked at his pondering face. “I should like
to. It must be hard on Mum not to have nice things—much harder than for
us, because we’ve never had them—at least, we had them when we were
small, but we never got used to them. So we’ve forgotten.”

“No, we’re all right as long as we have useful things,” said the
Terror, without relaxing his thoughtful frown. “But you’re right about
Mum—she must be different. I’ve got to think this out.”

“Three guineas is such a lot to think out,” said Erebus despondently.

“I thought out thirty pounds not so very long ago,” said the Terror
firmly. “And if you come to think of it, Mum’s stole is really more
important than bicycles and a cats’ home, though not so useful.”

“But it’s different—we _had_ to have bicycles—you said so,” said Erebus
eagerly.

“Well, we’ve got to have this stole,” said the Terror in a tone of
finality; and the matter settled, his brow smoothed to its wonted
serenity.

“But how?” said Erebus eagerly.

“Things will occur to us. They always do,” said the Terror with a
careless confidence.

They began to put the kittens into their hutches. Half-way through the
operation the Terror paused:

“I wonder if we could sell any of these kittens? Does any one ever buy
kittens?”

“We did; we gave threepence each for these,” said Erebus.

“Ah, but we had to buy something in the way of cats for the home. We
should never have bought a kitten but for that. We shouldn’t have
dreamt of doing such a thing.”

“I should buy kittens if I were rich and hadn’t got any,” said Erebus
in a tone of decision.

“You would, would you? That’s just what I wanted to know: girls will
buy kittens,” said the Terror in a tone of satisfaction. “Well, we’ll
sell these.”

“But we can’t empty the home,” said Erebus.

“We wouldn’t. We’d buy fresh ones, just able to lap, for threepence
each, and sell these at a shilling. We might make nearly a sovereign
that way.”

“So we should—a whole sovereign!” cried Erebus; then she added in a
somewhat envious tone: “You do think of things.”

“I have to. Where should we be, if I didn’t?” said the Terror.

“But who are we going to sell them to? Everybody round here has cats.”

“Yes, they have,” said the Terror, frowning again. “Well, we shall have
to sell them somewhere else.”

They put the sleepy kittens back in their hutches, and walked back to
the house, pondering. The Terror collected the books for his morning’s
work slowly, still thoughtful.

As he was leaving the house he said: “Look here; the place for us to
sell them is Rowington. The people round here sell most of their things
at Rowington—butter and eggs and poultry and rabbits.”

“And Ellen would sell them for us—in the market,” said Erebus quickly.

“Of course she would! You see, you think of things, too!” cried the
Terror; and he went off to his lessons with an almost cheerful air.

After lunch they rode to Great Deeping to discuss with Ellen the matter
of selling their kittens. She had been their nurse for the first four
years of their stay at Colet House; and she had left them to marry a
small farmer. She had an affection for them, especially for the Terror;
and she had not lost touch with them. She welcomed them warmly, ushered
them into her little parlor, brought in a decanter of elderberry wine
and a cake. When she had helped them to cake and poured out their wine,
the Terror broached the matter that had brought them to her house.

Ellen’s mind ran firmly and unswerving in the groove of butter and eggs
and poultry, which she carried every market-day to Rowington in her
pony-cart. She laughed consumedly at the Terror’s belief that any one
would want to buy kittens. But unmoved by her open incredulity, he was
very patient with her and persuaded her to try, at any rate, to sell
their kittens at her stall in Rowington market. Ellen consented to make
the attempt, for she had always found it difficult to resist the Terror
when he had set his mind on a thing, and she was eager to oblige him;
but she held out no hopes of success.

The Terror came away content, since he had gained his end, and did not
share her despondency. Erebus, on the other hand, infected by Ellen’s
pessimism, rode in a gloomy depression.

Presently her face brightened; and with an air of inspiration she said:
“I tell you what: even if we don’t sell those kittens, we can always
buy the stole. There’s all that cats’ home money in the bank. We can
take as much of it as we want, and pay it back by degrees.”

“No, we can’t,” said the Terror firmly. “We’re not going to use that
money for anything but the cats’ home. I promised Mum I wouldn’t.
Besides, she’d like the stole ever so much better if we’d really earned
it ourselves.”

“But we shan’t,” said Erebus gloomily. “If we sold all the kittens, it
will only make twenty-three shillings.”

“Then we must find something else to sell,” said the Terror with
decision.

His mind was running on this line, when a quarter of a mile from Little
Deeping they came upon Tom Cobb leaning over a gate surveying a field
of mangel-wurzel with vacant amiability.

Tom Cobb was the one villager they respected; and he and they were very
good friends. Carping souls often said that Tom Cobb had never done an
honest day’s work in his life. Yet he was the smartest man in the
village, the most neatly dressed, always with money in his pocket.

It was common knowledge that his fortunate state arose from his
constitutional disability to observe those admirable laws which have
been passed for the protection of the English pheasants from all
dangers save the small shot of those who have them fed. Tom Cobb waged
war, a war of varying fortunes against the sacred bird. Sometimes for a
whole season he would sell the victims of the carnage of the war with
never a check to his ardor. In another season some prying gamekeeper
would surprise him glutting his thirst for blood and gold, and an
infuriated bench of magistrates would fine him. The fine was always
paid. Tom Cobb was one of those thrifty souls who lay up money against
a rainy day.

He turned at the sound of their coming; and he and the Twins greeted
one another with smiles of mutual respect. They rode on a few yards;
and then the Terror said, “By Jove!” stopped, slipped off his bicycle,
and wheeled it back to the gate. Erebus followed him more slowly.

“I’ve been wondering if you’d do me a favor, Tom,” said the Terror.
“I’ve always wanted to know how to make a snare. I’ll give you
half-a-crown if you’ll teach me.”

Tom Cobb’s clear blue eyes sparkled at the thought of half-a-crown, but
he hesitated. He knew the Twins; he knew that with them a little
knowledge was a dangerous thing—for others. He foresaw trouble for the
sacred bird; he foresaw trouble for his natural foes, the gamekeepers.
He did not foresee trouble for the Twins; he knew them. And very
distinctly he saw half-a-crown.

He grinned and said slowly, “Yes, Master Terror, I’ll be very ’appy to
teach you ’ow to make a snare.”

“Thank you. I’ll come around to-morrow afternoon, about two,” said the
Terror gratefully.

“It _will_ be nice to know how to make snares!” cried Erebus happily as
they rode on. “I wonder we never thought of it before.”

“We didn’t want a fur stole before,” said the Terror.

The next afternoon Erebus in vain entreated him to take her with him to
Tom Cobb’s cottage to share the lesson in the art of making snares. But
the Terror would not. Often he was indulgent; often he was firm. To-day
he was firm.

He returned from his lesson with a serene face, but he said rather
sadly: “I’ve still a lot to learn. But come on: I’ve got to buy
something in Rowington.”

They rode swiftly into Rowington, for the next day was market-day, and
they had to get the kittens ready for Ellen to sell. At Rowington the
Terror bought copper wire at an ironmonger’s; and he was very careful
to buy it of a certain thickness.

They rode home swiftly, and at once selected six kittens for the
experiment. Much to the surprise and disgust of those kittens, they
washed them thoroughly in the kitchen. They dried them, and decided to
keep them in its warmth till the next morning.

After the washing of the kittens, they betook themselves to the making
of snares. Erebus, ever sanguine, supposed that they would make snares
at once. The Terror had no such expectation; and it was a long while
before he got one at all to his liking.

Remembering Tom Cobb’s instructions, he washed it, and then put on
gloves before setting it in the hole in the hedge through which the
rabbits from the common were wont to enter their garden to eat the
cabbages. He was up betimes next morning, found a rabbit in the snare,
and thrilled with joy. The fur stole had come within the range of
possibility.

Before breakfast they made the toilet of the six chosen kittens,
brushing them with the Terror’s hair-brush till their fur was of a
sleekness it had never known before. Then Erebus adorned the neck of
each with a bow of blue ribbon. Knowing the ways of kittens, she sewed
on the bows, and sewed them on firmly. It could not be doubted that
they looked much finer than ordinary unwashed kittens. Directly after
breakfast, the Twins put three in the basket of either of their
bicycles, rode over to Rowington and handed them over to Ellen.

They would have liked to stay to see what luck she had with them but
they had to return to their lessons. After lunch they made three more
snares; and the Terror found that the fingers of Erebus were, if
anything, more deft at snare-making than his own.

It was late in the afternoon when they reached Rowington again; and
when they came to Ellen’s stall, they found to their joy that the
basket which had held the six kittens was empty.

Ellen greeted them with a smile of the liveliest satisfaction, and
said: “Well, Master Terror, you were right, and I was wrong. I’ve sold
them kitties—every one—and I’ve had two more ordered. It was when the
ladies from the Hill came marketing that they went.”

She opened her purse, took out six shillings, and held them out to the
Terror.

“Five,” said the Terror. “I must pay you a shilling for selling them.
It’s what they call commission.”

“No, sir; I don’t want any commission,” said Ellen firmly. “As long as
those kitties were there, I sold more butter and eggs and fowls than
any one else in the market. I haven’t had such a good day not ever
before. And I’ll be glad to sell as many kitties as you can bring me.”

The Terror pressed her to accept the shilling, but she remained firm.
The Twins rode joyfully home with six shillings.

That night the Terror set his four snares in the hedge of the garden
about the common. He caught three rabbits.

The next morning he was silent and very thoughtful as he helped feed
the kittens and change the bay in the hutches.

At last he said rather sadly: “It’s sometimes rather awkward being a
Dangerfield.”

“Why?” said Erebus surprised.

“Those rabbits,” said the Terror. “I want to sell them. But it’s no
good going into Rowington and trying to sell them to a poulterer. Even
if he wanted rabbits—which he mightn’t—he’d only give me sixpence each
for them. But if I were to sell them myself _here_, I could get
eightpence, or perhaps ninepence each for them. But, you see, a
Dangerfield can’t go about selling things. Uncle Maurice said I had the
makings of a millionaire in me, but a Dangerfield couldn’t go into
business. It’s the family tradition not to. That’s what he said.”

“Perhaps he was only rotting,” said Erebus hopefully.

“No, he wasn’t. I asked Mum, and she said it was the family tradition,
too. I expect that’s why we’re all so hard up.”

“But the squire sells things,” said Erebus quickly. “And you can’t say
he isn’t a gentleman, though the Anstruthers aren’t so old as the
Dangerfields.”

“Of course, he does. He sells some of his game,” said the Terror, in a
tone of great relief. “Game must be all right, and we can easily count
rabbits as game.”

Forthwith he proceeded to count rabbits as game; they put the four they
had caught into the baskets of their bicycles and rode out on a tour of
the neighborhood. The Terror went to the back doors of their well-to-do
neighbors and offered his rabbits to their cooks with the gratifying
result that in less than an hour he had sold all four of them at
eightpence each.

They rode home in triumph: the fur stole was moving toward them. They
had already eight shillings and eightpence out of the sixty-three
shillings.

It was sometimes said of the Twins by the carping that they never knew
when to stop; but in this case it was not their fault that they went
on. It was the fault of the rabbit market. At the fifteenth rabbit,
when they had but eighteen shillings and eightpence toward the stole,
the bottom fell out of it. For the time the desire of Little Deeping to
eat rabbits was sated.

It was also the fault of the insidious cook of Mrs. Blenkinsop, who,
after refusing to buy the fifteenth rabbit, said: “Now, if you was to
bring me a nice fat pheasant twice a week, it would be a very different
thing, Master Dangerfield.”

The Terror looked at her thoughtfully; then he said: “And how much
would you pay for pheasants?”

The cook made a silent appeal to those processes of mental arithmetic
she had learned in her village school, saw her way to a profit of
threepence, perhaps ninepence, on each bird, and said: “Two and
threepence each, sir.”

The Terror looked at her again thoughtfully, considering her offer. He
saw her profit of threepence, perhaps ninepence, and said: “All right,
I’ll bring you two or three a week. But you’ll have to pay cash.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Of course, sir,” said the cook.

“Do you know any one else who’d buy pheasants?” he said.

“Well, there’s Mr. Carrington’s cook,” said the cook slowly. “She has
the management of the housekeeping money like I do. I think she might
buy pheasants from you. Mr. Carrington’s very partial to game.”

“Right,” said the Terror. “And thank you for telling me.”

He rode straight to the house of Mr. Carrington, and broached the
matter to his cook, to whom he had already sold rabbits. He made a
direct offer to her of two pheasants a week at two and threepence each.
After a vain attempt to beat him down to two shillings, she accepted
it.

He rode home in a pleasant glow of triumph: the snares which caught
rabbits would catch pheasants. At first he was for catching those
pheasants by himself. Snaring rabbits was a harmless enterprise;
snaring pheasants was poaching; and poaching was not a girl’s work.
Then he came to the conclusion that he would need the help of Erebus
and must tell her.

When he revealed to her this vision of a new Eldorado, she said: “But
where are you going to get pheasants from?”

“Woods,” said the Terror, embracing the horizon in a sweeping gesture.

Erebus looked round the horizon with greedy eyes; they sparkled
fiercely.

“The only thing is, we don’t know nearly enough about snaring
pheasants. And I don’t like to ask Tom Cobb: he might talk about it;
and that wouldn’t do at all,” said the Terror.

“But there’s nobody else to ask.”

“I don’t know about that. There’s Wiggins’ father. He knows a lot of
useful things besides higher mathematics. The only thing is, we must do
it in such a way that he doesn’t see we’re trying to get anything out
of him.”

“Well, I should think we could do that. He’s really quite simple,” said
Erebus.

“As long as _you_ understand what I’m driving at,” said the Terror.

That evening they prepared eight more kittens for sale at Rowington
market, and carried them into Rowington directly after breakfast next
morning. Ellen told them, with some indignation, that two rival
poultry-sellers had both brought three kittens to sell. The Twins at
once went to inspect them, and came back with the cheering assurance
that those kittens were not a patch on those she was selling. They were
right, for Ellen sold all the eight before a rival sold one; and the
joyful Twins carried home eight more shillings toward the stole.

On the next three afternoons they rode forth with the intention of
coming upon Mr. Carrington by seeming accident; but it was not till the
third afternoon that they came upon him and Wiggins, walking briskly,
about three miles from Little Deeping.

The Twins, as a rule, were wont to shun Mr. Carrington. They had a
great respect for his attainments, but a much greater for his humor. In
Erebus, this respect often took the form of wriggling in his presence.
She did not know what he might say about her next. He was, therefore,
somewhat surprised when they slipped off their bicycles and joined him.
He wondered what they wanted.

Apparently, they were merely in a gregarious mood, yearning for the
society of their fellow creatures; but in about three minutes the talk
was running on pheasants. Mr. Carrington did not like pheasants, except
from the point of view of eating; and he dwelt at length on the
devastation the sacred bird was working in the English countryside:
villages were being emptied and let fall to ruin that it might live
undisturbed; the song-birds were being killed off to give it the woods
to itself.

It seemed but a natural step from the pheasant to the poacher; he was
not aware that he took it at the prompting of the Terror; and he
bewailed the degeneracy of the British rustic, his slow reversion to
the type of neolithic man, owing to the fact that the towns drained the
villages of all the intelligent. The skilful poacher who harried the
sacred bird was fast becoming extinct.

Then, at last, he came to the important matter of the wiles of the
poacher; and the thirsty ears of the Terror drank in his golden words.
He discussed the methods of the gang of poachers and the single poacher
with intelligent relish and more sympathy than was perhaps wise to
display in the presence of the young. The Terror came from that talk
with a firm belief in the efficacy of raisins.

The next afternoon the Twins rode into Rowington and bought a pound of
raisins at the leading grocer’s. They might well have bought them at
Little Deeping, encouraging local enterprise; but they thought
Rowington safer. They always took every possible precaution at the
beginning of an enterprise. They did not ride straight home. Three
miles out of Rowington was a small clump of trees on a hill. At the
foot of the hill, a hundred yards below the clump, lay Great Deeping
wood, acre upon acre. It had lately passed, along with the rest of the
Great Deeping estate, into the hands of Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, a
pudding-faced, but stanch young Briton of the old Pomeranian strain. He
was not loved in the county, even by landed proprietors of less modern
stocks, for, though he cherished the laudable ambition of having the
finest pheasant shoot in England, and was on the way to realize it, he
did not invite his neighbors to help shoot them. His friends came
wholly from The Polite World which so adorns the illustrated weeklies.

It was in the deep December dusk that the Twins’ came to the clump on
the hill. The Terror lifted their bicycles over the gate and set them
behind the hedge. He removed the pound of raisins from his bicycle
basket to his pocket, and leaving Erebus to keep watch, he stole down
the hedge to the clump, crawled through a gap into it, and walked
through it. One pheasant scuttled out of it, down the hedgerow to the
wood below. The occurrence pleased him. He crawled out of the clump on
the farther side, and proceeded to lay a train of raisins down the
ditch of the hedge to the wood. He did not lay it right down to the
wood lest some inquisitive gamekeeper might espy it. Then he returned
with fine, red Indian caution to Erebus. They rode home well content.

Next evening, with another bag of raisins, they sought the clump again.
Again the Terror laid a trail of raisins along the ditch from the wood
to the clump. But this evening he set a snare in the hedge of the
clump. Just above the end of the ditch. Later he took from that snare a
plump but sacred bird. Later still he sold it to the cook of Mrs.
Blenkinsop for two and threepence.

CHAPTER VI
AND THE LANDED PROPRIETOR

On reaching home the Terror displayed the two shillings and threepence
to Erebus with an unusual air of triumph; as a rule he showed himself
serenely unmoved alike in victory and defeat.

“That’s all right,” said Erebus cheerfully. “That makes—that makes
twenty-eight and eleven-pence. We _are_ getting on.”

“Yes; it’s twenty-eight and eleven-pence now,” said the Terror quickly.
“But you don’t seem to see that when we’ve got the stole for Mum these
pheasants will still be going on.”

“Of course they will!” cried Erebus; and her eyes shone very brightly
indeed at the joyful thought.

The next day the Terror obtained some sandwiches from Sarah after
breakfast; and as soon as his lessons were over he rode hard to the
clump above Great Deeping wood. He reached it at the hour when
gamekeepers are at their dinner, and was able to make a thorough
examination of it. He found it full of pheasant runs, and chose the two
likeliest places for his snares. He did not set them then and there; a
keeper on his afternoon round might see them. He came again in the
evening with Erebus, laid trails of raisins and set them then. Later he
sold a pheasant to the cook of Mrs. Blenkinsop and one to the cook of
Mr. Carrington.

During the next fortnight they sold eight more pheasants and eight more
kittens. They found themselves in the happy position of needing only
six shillings more to make up the price of the fur stole.

But it had been impossible for the Twins to remain content with the
clump of trees above Great Deeping wood. They had laid a trail of
raisins and set a snare in the wood itself, in the nearest corner of it
on the valley road which divides the wood into two nearly equal parts.

On the next afternoon they had ridden into Rowington with Wiggins; and
since the roads were heavy they did not go back the shortest way over
Great Deeping hill, but took the longer level road along the valley.
The afternoon was still young, and for December, uncommonly clear and
bright. But as they rode through the wood, the Terror decided that
instead of returning to it in the favoring dusk he might as well
examine the snare in the corner now, and save himself another journey.
It was a risk no experienced poacher would have taken; but old heads,
alas! do not grow on young shoulders.

He dismounted about the middle of the wood, informed the other two of
his purpose (to the surprise of Wiggins who had not been informed of
his friends’ latest exploits) and made his dispositions. When they came
to the corner of the wood, Erebus rode on up the road to keep a lookout
ahead. The Terror slipped off his bicycle, and so did Wiggins. Wiggins
held the two bicycles. The Terror listened. The wood was very still in
its winter silence. He slipped through the hedge into it, and presently
came back bringing with him a very nice young pheasant indeed. He put
it into the basket of his bicycle, and mounted.

They had barely started when a keeper sprang out of the hedge, thirty
yards ahead, and came running toward them, shouting in a very daunting
fashion as he came. There was neither time nor room to turn. They rode
on; and the keeper made for the Terror. The Terror swerved; and the
keeper swerved. Wiggins ran bang into the keeper; and they came to the
ground together as the Terror shot ahead, pedaling as hard as he could.

He caught up Erebus, and his cry of “Keeper!” set her racing beside
him; but both of them kept looking back for Wiggins; and presently,
when no Wiggins appeared, with one accord they slowed down, stopped and
dismounted.

“The keeper’s got him. This is a mess!” said the Terror, who was
panting a little from their spurt.

“If only it had been one of us!” cried Erebus. “Whatever are we to do?”

“If that beastly keeper hadn’t seen me with the pheasant, I’d get
Wiggins away, somehow,” said the Terror. “But, as it is, it’s me they
really want; and I’d get fined to a dead certainty. Come on, let’s go
back and see what’s happened to him. You scout on ahead. Nobody knows
you’re in it.”

“All right,” said Erebus; and she mounted briskly.

She rode back through the wood slowly, her keen eyes straining for a
sign of an ambush. The Terror followed her at a distance of sixty
yards, ready to jump off, turn his machine, and fly should she give the
alarm. They got no sight of Wiggins till they came, just beyond the end
of the wood, to the lodges of Great Deeping Park; then, half-way up the
drive, they saw the keeper and his prey. The keeper held Wiggins with
his left hand and wheeled the captured bicycle with his right. The
Twins dismounted. Even at that distance they could see the deep
dejection of their friend.

“There’s not really any reason for him to be frightened. He was never
in the wood at all; and he never touched the pheasant,” said the
Terror.

“What does that matter? He _will_ be frightened out of his life; he’s
so young,” cried Erebus in a tone of acute distress, gazing after their
receding friend with very anxious eyes. “He’s not like us; he won’t
cheek the keeper all the way like we should.”

“Oh, Wiggins has plenty of pluck,” said the Terror in a reassuring
tone.

“But he won’t understand he’s all right. He’s only ten. And there’s no
saying how that beastly foreigner who shoots nightingales will bully
him,” cried Erebus with unabated anxiety.

This was her womanly irrational conception of a Pomeranian Briton.

“Well, the sooner we go and fetch his father the sooner he’ll be out of
it,” said the Terror, making as if to mount his bicycle.

“No, no! That won’t do at all!” cried Erebus fiercely. “We’ve got to
rescue him now—at once. We got him into the mess; and we’ve got to get
him out of it. You’ve got to find a way.”

“It’s all very well,” said the Terror, frowning deeply; and he took off
his cap to wrestle more manfully with the problem.

Erebus faced him, frowning even more deeply.

Never had the Twins been so hopelessly at a loss.

Then the Terror said in his gloomiest tone: “I can’t see what we can
do.”

“Oh, I’m going to get him out of it somehow!” cried Erebus in a furious
desperation.

With that she mounted her bicycle and rode swiftly up the drive.

The Terror mounted, started after her, and stopped at the end of fifty
yards. It had occurred to him that, after all, he was the only poacher
of the three, the only one in real danger. As he leaned on his machine,
watching his vanishing sister, he ground his teeth. For all his natural
serenity, inaction was in the highest degree repugnant to him.

Erebus reached Great Deeping Court but a few minutes after Wiggins and
the keeper. She was about to ride on round the house, thinking that the
keeper would, as befitted his station, enter it by the back door, when
she saw Wiggins’ bicycle standing against one of the pillars of the
great porch. In a natural elation at having captured a poacher, and
eager to display his prize without delay, the keeper had gone straight
into the great hall.

Erebus dismounted and stood considering for perhaps half a minute; then
she moved Wiggins’ bicycle so that it was right to his hand if he came
out, set her own bicycle against another of the pillars, but out of
sight lest he should take it by mistake, walked up the steps, hammered
the knocker firmly, and rang the bell. The moment the door opened she
stepped quickly past the footman into the hall. The keeper sat on a
chair facing her, and on a chair beside him sat Wiggins looking white
and woebegone.

Erebus gazed at them with angry sparkling eyes, then she said sharply:
“What are you doing with my little brother?”

She adopted Wiggins with this suddenness in order to strengthen her
position.

The keeper opened his eyes in some surprise at her uncompromising tone,
but he said triumphantly:

“I caught ’im poachin’—”

“Stand up! What do you mean by speaking to me sitting down?” cried
Erebus in her most imperative tone.

The keeper stood up with uncommon quickness and a sudden sheepish air:
“’E was poachin’,” he said sulkily.

“He was not! A little boy like that!” cried Erebus scornfully.

“Anyways, ’e was aidin’ an’ abettin’, an’ I’ve brought ’im to Mr.
D’Arcy Rosynimer an’ it’s for ’im to say,” said the keeper stubbornly.

There came a faint click from the beautiful lips of Erebus, the gentle
click by which the Twins called each other to attention. At the sound
Wiggins, his face faintly flushed with hope, braced himself. Erebus
measured the distance with the eye of an expert, just as there came
into the farther end of the hall that large, flabby, pudding-faced
young Pomeranian Briton, Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer.

“Where’s the boacher?” he roared in an eager, angry voice, reverting in
his emotion to the ancestral “b.”

As the keeper turned to him Erebus sprang to the door and threw it
wide.

“Bolt, Wiggins!” she cried.

Wiggins bolted for the door; the keeper grabbed at him and missed; the
footman grabbed, and grabbed the interposing Erebus. She slammed the
door behind the vanished Wiggins.

Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer dashed heavily down the hall with a thick howl.
Erebus set her back against the door. He caught her by the left arm to
sling her out of the way. It was a silly arm to choose, for she caught
him a slap on his truly Pomeranian expanse of cheek with the full swing
of her right, a slap that rang through the great hall like the crack of
a whip-lash. Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was large but tender. He howled
again, and thumped at Erebus with big flabby fists. She caught the
first blow on an uncommonly acute elbow. The second never fell, for the
footman caught him by the collar and swung him round.

“It’s not for the likes of you to ’it Henglish young ladies!” he cried
with patriotic indignation.

Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer gasped and gurgled; then he howled furiously,
“Ged out of my house! Now—at once—ged out!”

“And pleased I shall be to go—when I’ve bin paid my wages. It’s a month
to-morrow since I gave notice, anyhow. I’ve had enough of furriners,”
said the footman with cold exultation.

“Go—go—ged oud!” roared Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer.

“When I’ve bin paid my wages,” said the footman coldly.

Erebus waited to hear no more. She turned the latch, slipped through
the door, and slammed it behind her. To her dismay she saw a big
motorcar coming round the corner of the house. She mounted quickly and
raced down the drive. Wiggins was already out of sight.

Just outside the lodge gates she found the Terror waiting for her.

“I’ve sent Wiggins on!” he shouted as she passed.

“Come on! Come on!” she shrieked back. “The beastly foreigner’s got a
motor-car!”

He caught her up in a quarter of a mile; and she told him that the car
had been ready to start. They caught up Wiggins a mile and a half down
the road; and all three of them sat down to ride all they knew. They
were fully eight miles from home, and the car could go three miles to
their one on that good road. The Twins alone would have made a longer
race of it; but the pace was set by the weaker Wiggins. They had gone
little more than three miles when they heard the honk of the car as it
came rapidly round a corner perhaps half a mile behind them.

“Go on, Terror!” cried Erebus. “You’re the one that matters! You did
the poaching! I’ll look after Wiggins! He’ll be all right with me.”

For perhaps fifty yards the Terror hesitated; then the wisdom of the
advice sank in, and he shot ahead. Erebus kept behind Wiggins; and they
rode on. The car was overhauling them rapidly, but not so rapidly as it
would have done had not Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, who lacked the courage
of his famous grenadier ancestors, been in it. He was howling at his
straining chauffeur to go slower.

Nevertheless at the end of a mile and a half the car was less than
fifty yards behind them; and then a figure came into sight swinging
briskly along.

“It’s your father!” gasped Erebus.

It was, indeed, the higher mathematician.

As they reached him, they flung themselves off their bicycles; and
Erebus cried: “Wiggins hasn’t been poaching at all! It was the Terror!”

“Was it, indeed?” said Mr. Carrington calmly.

On his words the car was on them; and as it came to a dead stop Mr.
D’Arcy Rosenheimer tumbled clumsily out of it.

“I’ve got you, you liddle devil!” he bellowed triumphantly, but quite
incorrectly; and he rushed at Wiggins who stepped discreetly behind his
father.

“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Carrington.

The excited young Pomeranian Briton, taking in his age and size at a
single glance, shoved him aside with splendid violence. Mr. Carrington
seemed to step lightly backward and forward in one movement; his left
arm shot out; and there befell Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer what, in the
technical terms affected by the fancy, is described as “an uppercut on
the point which put him to sleep.” He fell as falls a sack of potatoes,
and lay like a log.

The keeper had just disengaged himself from the car and hurried
forward.

“Do you want some too, my good man?” said Mr. Carrington in his most
agreeable tone, keeping his guard rather low.

The keeper stopped short and looked down, with a satisfaction he made
no effort to hide, at the body of his stricken employer which lay
between them.

“I can’t say as I do, sir,” he said civilly; and he backed away.

“Then perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me the name of this hulking
young blackguard who assaults quiet elderly gentlemen, taking
constitutionals, in this most unprovoked and wanton fashion,” said the
higher mathematician in the same agreeable tone.

“Assaults?—’Im assault?—Yes, sir; it’s Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, of Great
Deeping Court, sir,” said the keeper respectfully.

“Then tell Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer, when he recovers the few wits he
looks to have, with my compliments, that he will some time this evening
be summoned for assault. Good afternoon,” said Mr. Carrington, and he
turned on his heel.

The keeper and the chauffeur stooped over the body of their young
employer. Mr. Carrington did not so much as turn his head. He put his
walking-stick under his arm, and rubbed the knuckles of his left hand
with rueful tenderness. None the less he looked pleased; it was
gratifying to a slight man of his sedentary habit to have knocked down
such a large, round Pomeranian Briton with such exquisite neatness.
Wheeling their bicycles, Erebus and Wiggins walked beside him with a
proud air. They felt that they shone with his reflected glory. It was a
delightful sensation.

They had gone some forty yards, when Erebus said in a hushed, awed, yet
gratified tone: “Have you killed him, Mr. Carrington?”

“No, my child. I am not a pork-butcher,” said Mr. Carrington amiably.

“He _looked_ as if he was dead,” said Erebus; and there was a faint
ring of disappointment in her tone.

“In a short time the young man will come to himself; and let us hope
that it will be a better and wiser self,” said Mr. Carrington. “But
what was it all about? What did that truculent young ruffian want with
Rupert?”

Erebus paused, looking earnestly round to the horizon for inspiration;
then she dashed at the awkward subject with commendable glibness: “It
was a pheasant in Great Deeping wood,” she said. “The Terror found it,
I suppose. I had gone on, and I didn’t see that part. But it was
Wiggins the keeper caught. Of course—”

“I beg your pardon; but I should like that point a little clearer,”
broke in Mr. Carrington. “Had you ridden on too, Rupert? Or did you see
what happened?”

“Oh, yes; I was there,” said Wiggins readily. “And the Terror found the
pheasant in the wood and put it in his bicycle basket. And we had just
got on our bicycles when the keeper came out of the wood, and I ran
into him; and he collared me and took me up to the Court. I wasn’t
really frightened—at least, not much.”

“The keeper had no right to touch him,” Erebus broke in glibly.
“Wiggins never touched the pheasant; he didn’t even go into the wood;
and when I went into the hall, the hall of the Court, I found him and
the keeper sitting there, and I let Wiggins out, of course, and then
that horrid Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer who shoots nightingales, caught hold
of me by the arm ever so roughly, and I slapped him just once. I should
think that the mark is still there “—her speed of speech slackened to a
slower vengeful gratification and then quickened again—“and he began to
thump me and the footman interfered, and I came away, and they came
after us in the car, and you saw what happened—at least you did it.”

She stopped somewhat breathless.

“Lucidity itself,” said Mr. Carrington. “But let us have the matter of
the pheasant clear. Was the Terror exploring the wood on the chance of
finding a pheasant, or had he reason to expect that a pheasant would be
there ready to be brought home?”

Erebus blushed faintly, looked round the horizon somewhat aimlessly,
and said, “Well, there was a snare, you know.”

Mr. Carrington chuckled and said: “I thought so. I thought we should
come to that snare in time. Did you know there was a snare, Rupert?”

“Oh, no, he didn’t know anything about it!” Erebus broke in quickly.
“We should never have thought of letting him into anything so
dangerous! He’s so young!”

“I shall be eleven in a fortnight!” said Wiggins with some heat.

“You see, we wanted a fur stole at Barker’s in Rowington for a
Christmas present for mother; and pheasants were the only way we could
think of getting it,” said Erebus in a confidential tone.

“Light! Light at last!” cried Mr. Carrington; and he laughed gently.
“Well, every one has been assaulted except the poacher; exquisitely
Pomeranian! But it’s just as well that they have, or that ingenious
brother of yours would be in a fine mess. As it is, I think we can go
on teaching our young Pomeranian not to be so high-spirited.” He
chuckled again.

He walked on briskly; and on the way to Little Deeping, he drew from
Erebus the full story of their poaching. When they reached the village
he did not go to his own house, but stopped at the garden gate of Mr.
Tupping, the lawyer who had sold his practise at Rowington and had
retired to Little Deeping. At his gate Mr. Carrington bade Erebus good
afternoon and told her to tell the Terror not to thrust himself on the
notice of any of Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer’s keepers who might be sent out
to hunt for the real culprit. He would better keep quiet.

Erebus mounted her bicycle and rode quickly home. She found the Terror
in the cats’ home, awaiting her impatiently.

“Well, did Wiggins get away all right?” he cried. “I passed Mr.
Carrington; and I thought he’d see that they didn’t carry him off
again.”

Erebus told him in terms of the warmest admiration how firmly Mr.
Carrington had dealt with the Pomeranian foe.

“By Jove! That was ripping! I do wish I’d been there!” said the Terror.
“He only hit him once, you say?”

“Only once. And he told me to tell you to lie low in case Mr.
Rosenheimer’s keepers are out hunting for you,” said Erebus.

“I am lying low,” said the Terror. “And I’ve got rid of that pheasant.
I sold it to Mr. Carrington’s cook as I came through the village. I
thought it was better out of the way.”

“Then that’s all right. We only want about another half-crown,” said
Erebus.

Mr. Carrington found Mr. Tupping at home; and he could not have gone to
a better man, for though the lawyer had given up active practise, he
still retained the work of a few old clients in whom he took a friendly
interest; and among them was Mrs. Dangerfield.

He was eager to prevent the Terror from being prosecuted for poaching
not only because the scandal would annoy her deeply but also because
she could so ill afford the expense of the case. He readily fell in
with the view of Mr. Carrington that they had better take the
offensive, and that the violent behavior of Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer had
given them the weapons.

The result of their council was that not later than seven o’clock that
evening Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was served by the constable of Little
Deeping with a summons for an assault on Violet Anastasia Dangerfield,
and with another summons for an assault on Bertram Carrington, F. R.
S.; and in the course of the next twenty minutes his keeper was served
with a summons for an assault on Rupert Carrington.

Though on recovering consciousness he had sent the keeper to scour the
neighborhood for Wiggins and the Terror, Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was in
a chastened shaken mood, owing to the fact that he had been “put to
sleep by an uppercut on the point.” He made haste to despatch a car
into Rowington to bring the lawyer who managed his local business.

The lawyer knew his client’s unpopularity in the county, and advised
him earnestly to try to hush these matters up. He declared that however
Pomeranian one might be by extraction and in spirit, no bench of
English magistrates would take a favorable view of an assault by a big
young man on a middle-aged higher mathematician of European reputation,
or on Miss Violet Anastasia Dangerfield, aged thirteen, gallantly
rescuing that higher mathematician’s little boy from wrongful arrest
and detention.

Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer held his aching head with both hands, protested
that they had done all the effective assaulting, and protested his
devotion to the sacred bird beloved of the English magistracy. But he
perceived clearly enough that he had let that devotion carry him too
far, and that a Bench which never profited by it, so far as to shoot
the particular sacred birds on which it was lavished, would not be
deeply touched by it. Therefore he instructed the lawyer to use every
effort to settle the matter out of court.

The lawyer dined with him lavishly, and then had, himself driven over
to Little Deeping in the car, to Mr. Carrington’s house. He found Mr.
Carrington uncommonly bitter against his client; and he did his best to
placate him by urging that the assault had been met with a promptitude
which had robbed it of its violence, and that he could well afford to
be generous to a man whom he had so neatly put to sleep with an
uppercut on the point.

Mr. Carrington held out for a while; but in the background, behind the
more prominent figures in the affair, lurked the Terror with a
veritable poached pheasant; and at last he made terms. The summonses
should be withdrawn on condition that nothing more was heard about that
poached pheasant and that Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer contributed fifty
guineas to the funds of the Deeping Cottage Hospital. The lawyer
accepted the terms readily; and his client made no objection to
complying with them.

The matter was at an end by noon of the next day; and Mr. Carrington
sent for the Terror and talked to him very seriously about this
poaching. He did not profess to consider it an enormity; he dwelt at
length on the extreme annoyance his mother would feel if he were caught
and prosecuted. In the end he gave him the choice of giving his word to
snare no more pheasants, or of having his mother informed that he was
poaching. The Terror gave his word to snare no more pheasants the more
readily since if Mrs. Dangerfield were informed of his poaching, she
would forbid him to set another snare for anything. Besides, he had
been somewhat shaken by his narrow escape the day before. Only he
pointed out that he could not be quite sure of never snaring a
pheasant, for pheasants went everywhere. Mr. Carrington admitted this
fact and said that it would be enough if he refrained from setting his
snares on ground sacred to the sacred bird. If pheasants wandered into
them on unpreserved ground, it was their own fault. Thanks therefore to
the firmness of her friends Mrs. Dangerfield never learned of the
Terror’s narrow escape.

The Twins bore the loss of income from the sacred bird with even minds,
since the sum needed for the fur stole was so nearly complete. They
turned their attention to the habits of the hare, and snared one in the
hedge of the farthest meadow of farmer Stubbs. Mrs. Blenkinsop’s cook
paid them half-a-crown for it; and the three guineas were complete.

Though it wanted a full week to Christmas, the Terror lost no time
making the purchase. As he told Erebus, they would get the choice of
more stoles if they bought it before the Christmas rush. Accordingly on
the afternoon after the sale of the hare they rode into Rowington to
buy it.

It was an uncommonly cold afternoon, for a bitter east wind was blowing
hard; and when they dismounted at the door of Barker’s shop, Erebus
gazed wistfully across the road at the appetizing window of Springer,
the confectioner, and said sadly:

“It’s a pity it isn’t Saturday and we had our ‘overseering’ salary. We
might have gone to Springer’s and had a jolly good blow-out for once.”

The Terror gazed at Springer’s window thoughtfully, and said: “Yes, it
is a pity. We ought to have remembered it was Christmas-time and paid
ourselves in advance.”

He followed Erebus into the shop with a thoughtful air, and seemed
somewhat absent-minded during her examination of the stoles. She was
very thorough in it; and both of them were nearly sure that she had
chosen the very best of them. The girl who was serving them made out
the bill; and the Terror drew the little bag which held the three
guineas (since it was all in silver they had been able to find no purse
of a capacity to hold it), emptied its contents on the counter, and
counted them slowly.

He had nearly finished, and the girl had nearly wrapped up the stole
when a flash of inspiration brightened his face; and he said firmly: “I
shall want five per cent. discount for cash.”

“Oh, we don’t do that sort of thing here,” said the girl quickly. “This
is such an old-established establishment.”

“I can’t help that. I must have discount for cash,” said the Terror yet
more firmly.

The girl hesitated; then she called Mr. Barker who, acting as his own
shop-walker, was strolling up and down with great dignity. Mr. Barker
came and she put the matter to him.

“Oh, no, sir; I’m afraid we couldn’t think of it. Barker’s is too old
established a house to connive at these sharp modern ways of doing
business,” said Mr. Barker with a very impressive air.

The Terror looked at him with a cold thoughtful eye: “All right,” he
said. “You can put the stole down to me—Master Hyacinth Dangerfield,
Colet House, Little Deeping.”

He began to shovel the money back into the bag.

An expression of deep pain spread over the mobile face of Mr. Barker as
the coins began to disappear; and he said quickly: “I’m afraid we can’t
do that, sir. Our terms are cash—strictly cash.”

“Oh, no, they’re not. My mother has had an account here for the last
six years,” said the Terror icily; and the last of the coins went into
the bag.

Mr. Barker held out a quivering hand, and with an air and in a tone of
warm geniality he cried: “Oh, that alters the case altogether! In the
case of the son of an old customer like Mrs. Dangerfield we’re
delighted to deduct five per cent. discount for cash—delighted. Make
out the bill for three pounds, Miss Perkins.”

Miss Perkins made out the bill for three pounds; and Erebus bore away
the stole tenderly.

As the triumphant Terror came out of the shop, he jingled the brave
three shillings discount in his pocket and said: “Now for Springer’s!”

CHAPTER VII
AND PRINGLE’S POND

Mrs. Dangerfield was indeed delighted with the stole, for she had an
almost extravagant fondness for furs; and it was long since she had had
any. She wondered how the Twins had saved and collected the money it
had cost; she knew that it had not been drawn from the cats’ home fund,
since the Terror had promised her that none of that money should be
diverted from its proper purpose; and she was the more grateful to them
for the thought and labor they must have devoted to acquiring it. On
the whole she thought it wiser not to inquire how the money had been
raised.

The Twins, as always, enjoyed an exceedingly pleasant Christmas. It was
the one week in the year when Little Deeping flung off its quietude and
gently rollicked. There was a dearth of children, young men and maidens
among their Little Deeping friends; and the Twins and Wiggins were in
request as the lighter element in the Christmas gatherings. Thanks to
the Terror, the three of them took this brightening function with
considerable seriousness: each of them learned by heart a humorous
piece of literature, generally verse, for reciting; and they performed
two charades in a very painstaking fashion. They had but little
dramatic talent; but they derived a certain grave satisfaction from the
discharge of this enlivening social duty; and their efforts were always
well received.

It was, as usual, a green and muggy Christmas. The weather broke about
the middle of January; and there came hard frosts and a heavy
snow-storm. The Twins made a glorious forty-foot slide on the common in
front of Colet House; and they constructed also an excellent toboggan
on which they rushed down the hill into the village street. These were
but light pleasures. They watched the ponds with the most careful
interest; eager, should they bear, not to miss an hour’s skating.
Wiggins shared their pleasures and their interest; and Mr. Carrington,
meeting the Terror on his way to his lessons at the vicarage, drew from
him a promise that he would not let his ardent son take any risk
whatever.

The ice thickened slowly on the ponds; then came another hard frost;
and the Twins made up their minds that it must surely bear. They ate
their breakfast in a great excitement; and as the Terror gathered
together his books for his morning’s work they made their plans.

He had strapped his books together; and as he caught up one of the two
pairs of brightly polished skates that lay on the table, he said: “Then
that’s settled. I’ll meet you at Pringle’s pond as soon after half past
twelve as I can get there; but you’d better not go on it before I
come.”

“Oh, it’ll bear all right; it nearly bore yesterday,” said Erebus
impatiently.

“Well, Wiggins isn’t to go on it before I come. You’ll do as you like
of course—as usual—and if you fall in, it’ll be your own lookout. But
he’s to wait till I come. If the ice does bear, it won’t bear any too
well; and I’m responsible for Wiggins. I promised Mr. Carrington to
look after him,” said the Terror in tones of stern gravity.

Erebus tossed her head and said in a somewhat rebellious tone: “As if I
couldn’t take care of him just as well as you. I’m as old as you.”

“Perhaps,” said the Terror doubtfully. “But you are a girl; there’s no
getting over it; and it does make a difference.”

Erebus turned and scowled at him as he moved toward the door; and she
scowled at the door after he had gone through it and shut it firmly
behind him. She hated to be reminded that she was a girl. The reminder
rankled at intervals during her lessons; and twice Mrs. Dangerfield
asked her what was distressing her that she scowled so fiercely.

At noon her lessons came to an end; and in less than three minutes she
was ready to go skating. She set out briskly across the common, and
found Wiggins waiting for her at his father’s garden-gate. He joined
her in a fine enthusiasm for the ice and talked of the certainty of its
bearing with the most hopeful confidence. She displayed an equal
confidence; and they took their brisk way across the white meadows.
More than usual Wiggins spurned the earth and advanced by leaps and
bounds. His blue eyes were shining very brightly in the cold winter
sunlight.

In ten minutes they came to Pringle’s pond. The wind had swept the ice
fairly clear of snow; and it looked smooth and very tempting. Also it
looked quite thick and strong. Erebus stepped on to it gingerly, found
that it bore her, and tested it with some care. She even jumped up and
down on it. It cracked, but it did not break; and she told herself that
ice always cracks, more or less. She set about putting on her skates;
and the joyful Wiggins, all fear of disappointment allayed, followed
her example.

When presently he stood upright in them ready to take the ice, she
looked at him doubtfully, then tossed her head impatiently. No; she
would not tell him that the Terror had charged her not to let him skate
till he came.… She could look after him quite as well as the Terror.…
She had tested the ice thoroughly.… It was perfectly safe.

Wiggins slid down the bank on to the ice; and she followed him. The ice
cracked somewhat noisily at their weight, and at intervals it cracked
again. Erebus paid no heed to its cracking beyond telling Wiggins not
to go far from the edge. She skated round and across the pond several
times, then settled down to make a figure of eight, resolved to have it
scored deeply in the ice before the Terror came. Wiggins skated about
the pond.

She had been at work some time and had got so far with her figure of
eight that it was already distinctly marked, when there was a crash and
a shrill cry from Wiggins. She turned sharply to see the water welling
up out of a dark triangular hole on the other side of the pond, where a
row of pollard willows had screened the ice from the full keenness of
the wind.

Wiggins was in that hole under the water.

She screamed and dashed toward it. She had nearly reached it when his
head came up above the surface; and he clutched at the ice. Two more
steps and a loud crack gave her pause. It flashed on her that if she
went near it, she would merely widen the hole and be helpless in the
water herself.

“Hold on! Hold on!” she cried as she stopped ten yards from the hole;
and then she sent a shrill piercing scream from all her lungs ringing
through the still winter air.

She screamed again and yet again. Wiggins’ face rose above the edge of
the ice; and he gasped and spluttered. Then she sank down gently, at
full length, face downward on the ice, and squirmed slowly, spread out
so as to distribute her weight over as wide a surface as possible,
toward the hole. Half a minute’s cautious squirming brought her hands
to the edge of it; and with a sob of relief she grasped his wrists. The
ice bent under her weight, but it did not break. The icy water, welling
out over it, began to drench her arms and chest.

Very gently she tried to draw Wiggins out over the ice; but she could
not. She could get no grip on it with her toes to drag from.

Wiggins’ little face, two feet from her own, was very white; and his
teeth chattered.

She set her teeth and strove to find a hold for her slipping toes. She
could not.

“C-c-can’t you p-p-pull m-m-me out?” chattered Wiggins.

“No, not yet,” she said hoarsely. “But it’s all right. The Terror will
be here in a minute.”

She raised her head as high as she could and screamed again.

She listened with all her ears for an answer. A bird squeaked shrilly
on the other side of the field; there was no other sound. Wiggins’
white face was now bluish round the mouth; and his eyes were full of
fear. Again she kicked about for a grip, in vain.

“It’s d-d-dreadfully c-c-cold,” said Wiggins in a very faint voice; he
began to sob; and his eyes looked very dully into hers.

She knew that it was dreadfully cold; her drenched arms and chest were
dreadfully cold; and he was in that icy water to his shoulders.

“Try to stick it out! Don’t give in! It’s only a minute or two longer!
The Terror _must_ come!” she cried fiercely.

His eyes gazed at her piteously; and she began to sob without feeling
ashamed of it. Then his eyes filled with that dreadful look of hopeless
bewildered distress of a very sick child; and they rolled in their
sockets scanning the cold sky in desperate appeal.

They terrified Erebus beyond words. She screamed, and then she screamed
and screamed. Wiggins’ face was a mere white blur through her blinding
tears of terror.

She knew nothing till her ankles were firmly gripped; and the Terror
cried loudly: “Stop that row!”

She felt him tug at her ankles but not nearly strongly enough to stir
her and Wiggins. He, too, could get no hold on the ice with his toes.

Then he cried: “Squirm round to the left. I’ll help you.”

He made his meaning clearer by tugging her ankles toward the left; and
she squirmed in that direction as fast as she dared over the bending
ice.

In less than half a minute the Terror got his feet among the roots of a
willow, gripped them with his toes, and with a strong and steady pull
began to draw them toward the bank. The ice creaked as Wiggins’ chest
came over the edge of the hole; but it did not break; and his body once
flat on the ice, the Terror hauled them to the side of the pond easily.
He dragged Erebus, still by the ankles, half up the bank to get most of
her weight off the ice. Then he stepped down on to it and picked up
Wiggins. Erebus’ stiff fingers still grasped his wrists; and they did
not open easily to let them go.

The Terror took one look at the deathly faintly-breathing Wiggins; then
he pulled off his woolen gloves, drew his knife from his pocket, opened
the blade with his teeth for quickness’ sake, tossed it to Erebus and
cried: “Cut off his skates! Pull off his boots and stockings!”

Then with swift deft fingers he stripped off Wiggins’ coat, jersey and
waistcoat, pulled on his gloves, caught up a handful of snow and began
to rub his chest violently. In the spring the Twins had attended a
course of the St. John’s Ambulance Society lectures, and among other
things had learned how to treat those dying from exposure. The Terror
was the quicker dealing with Wiggins since he had so often been the
subject on which he and Erebus had practised many kinds of first-aid.

He rubbed hard till the skin reddened with the blood flowing back into
it. Erebus with feeble fumbling fingers (she was almost spent with cold
and terror) cut the straps of his skates and the laces of his boots,
pulled them off, pulled off his stockings, and rubbed feebly at his
legs. The Terror turned Wiggins over and rubbed his back violently till
the blood reddened that. Wiggins uttered a little gasping grunt.

Forthwith the Terror pulled off his own coat and jersey and put them on
Wiggins; then he pulled off Wiggins’ knickerbockers and rubbed his
thighs till they reddened; then he pulled off his stockings and pulled
them on Wiggins’ legs. The stockings came well up his thighs; and the
Terror’s coat and jersey came well down them. Wiggins was completely
covered. But the Terror was not satisfied; he called on Erebus for her
stockings and pulled them on Wiggins over his own; then he took her
jacket and tied it round Wiggins’ waist by the sleeves.

Wiggins was much less blue; and the whiteness of his cheeks was no
longer a dead waxen color. He opened his eyes twice and shut them
feebly.

The Terror shook him, and shouted: “Come on, old chap! Make an effort!
We want to get you home!”

With that he raised him on to his feet, put his own cap well over
Wiggins’ cold wet head, slipped an arm round him under his shoulder,
bade Erebus support him in like manner on the other side; and they set
off toward the village half carrying, half dragging him along. They
went slowly for Wiggins’ feet dragged feebly and almost helplessly
along. Their arms round him helped warm him. It would have taken them a
long time to haul him all the way to his home; but fortunately soon
after they came out of Pringle’s meadows on to the road, Jakes, the
Great Deeping butcher, who supplies also Little Deeping and Muttle
Deeping with meat, came clattering along in his cart. Wiggins was
quickly hauled into it; and the three of them were at Mr. Carrington’s
in about four minutes.

As they hauled Wiggins along the garden path, the Terror, said to
Erebus: “You bolt home as hard as you can go. You must be awfully wet
and cold; and if you don’t want to be laid up, the sooner you take some
quinine and get to bed the better.”

As soon therefore as she had helped Wiggins over the threshold she ran
home as quickly as her legs, still stiff and cold, would carry her.

The arrival of the barelegged Terror in his waistcoat, bearing Wiggins
as a half-animate bundle, set Mr. Carrington’s house in an uproar. The
Terror, as the expert in first-aid, took command of the cook and
housemaid and Mr. Carrington himself. Wiggins was carried into the hot
kitchen and rolled in a blanket with a hot water bottle at his feet.
The cook was for two blankets and two hot water bottles; but the expert
Terror insisted with a firmness there was no bending that heat must be
restored slowly. As Wiggins warmed he gave him warm brandy and water
with a teaspoon. In ten minutes Wiggins was quite animate, able to talk
faintly, trying not to cry with the pain of returning circulation.

The Terror sent the cook and housemaid to get the sheets off his bed
and warm the blankets. In another five minute’s Mr. Carrington carried
Wiggins up to it, and gave him a dose of ammoniated quinine. Presently
he fell asleep.

The Terror had taken his coat off Wiggins; but he was still without
stockings and a jersey. He borrowed stockings and a sweater from Mr.
Carrington, and now that the business of seeing after Wiggins was over,
he told him how he had come to the pond to find Wiggins in the water
and Erebus spread out on the ice, holding him back from sinking. He was
careful not to tell him that he had forbidden Erebus to let Wiggins go
on the ice; and when Mr. Carrington began to thank him for saving him,
he insisted on giving all the credit to Erebus.

Mr. Carrington made him also take a dose of ammoniated quinine, and
then further fortified him with cake and very agreeable port wine. On
his way home the Terror went briskly round by Pringle’s pond and picked
up the skates and garments that had been left there. When he reached
home he found that Erebus was in bed. She seemed little the worse for
lying with her arms and chest in that icy water, keeping Wiggins
afloat; and when she learned that Wiggins also seemed none the worse
and was sleeping peacefully, she ate her lunch with a fair appetite.

The Terror did not point out that all the trouble had sprung from her
disregard for his instructions; he only said: “I just told Mr.
Carrington that Wiggins was already in the water when I got to the
pond.”

“That was awfully decent of you,” said Erebus after a pause in which
she had gathered the full bearing of his reticence.

CHAPTER VIII
AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES

The dreadful fright she had suffered did not throw a cloud over the
spirit of Erebus for as long as might have been expected. She was as
quick as any one to realize that all’s well that ends well; and Wiggins
escaped lightly, with a couple of days in bed. The adventure, however,
induced a change in her attitude to him; she was far less condescending
with him than she had been; indeed she seemed to have acquired
something of a proprietary interest in him and was uncommonly
solicitous for his welfare. To such a point did this solicitude go that
more than once he remonstrated bitterly with her for fussing about him.

During the rest of the winter, the spring and the early summer, their
lives followed an even tenor: they did their lessons; they played their
games; then tended the inmates of the cats’ home, selling them as they
grew big, and replacing the sold with threepenny kittens just able to
lap.

In the spring they fished the free water of the Whittle, the little
trout-stream that runs through the estate of the Morgans of Muttle
Deeping Grange. The free water runs for rather more than half a mile on
the Little Deeping side of Muttle Deeping; and the Twins fished it with
an assiduity and a skill which set the villagers grumbling that they
left no fish for any one else. Also the Twins tried to get leave to
fish Sir James Morgan’s preserved water, higher up the stream. But Mr.
Hilton, the agent of the estate, was very firm in his refusal to give
them leave: for no reason that the Twins could see, since Sir James was
absent, shooting big game in Africa. They resented the refusal
bitterly; it seemed to them a wanton waste of the stream. It was some
consolation to them to make a well-judged raid one early morning on the
strawberry-beds in one of the walled gardens of Muttle Deeping Grange.

About the middle of June the Terror went to London on a visit to their
Aunt Amelia. Sir Maurice Falconer and Miss Hendersyde saw to it that it
was not the unbroken series of visits to cats’ homes Lady Ryehampton
had arranged for him; and he enjoyed it very much. On his return he was
able to assure the interested Erebus that their aunt’s parrot still
said “dam” with a perfectly accurate, but monotonous iteration.

Soon after his return the news was spread abroad that Sir James Morgan
had let Muttle Deeping Grange. In the life of the Deeping villages the
mere letting of Muttle Deeping Grange was no unimportant event, but the
inhabitants of Great Deeping, Muttle Deeping (possibly a corruption of
Middle Deeping), and Little Deeping were stirred to the very depths of
their being when the news came that it had been let to a German
princess. The women, at any rate, awaited her coming with the liveliest
interest and curiosity, emotions dashed some way from their fine height
when they learned that Princess Elizabeth, of Cassel-Nassau, was only
twelve years and seven months old.

The Twins did not share the excited curiosity of their neighbors.
Resenting deeply the fact that the tenant of Muttle Deeping was a
_German_ princess, they assumed an attitude of cold aloofness in the
matter, and refused to be interested or impressed. Erebus was more
resentful than the Terror; and it is to be suspected that the high
patriotic spirit she displayed in the matter was in some degree owing
to the fact that Mrs. Blenkinsop, who came one afternoon to tea,
gushing information about the grandfathers, grandmothers, parents,
uncles, cousins and aunts of the princess, ended by saying, with
meaning, “And what a model she will be to the little girls of the
neighborhood!”

Erebus told the Terror that things were indeed come to a pretty pass
when it was suggested to an English girl, a Dangerfield, too, that she
should model herself on a German.

“I don’t suppose it would really make any difference who you modeled
yourself on,” said the Terror, desirous rather of being frank than
grammatical.

When presently the princess came to the Grange, the lively curiosity of
her neighbors was gratified by but imperfect visions of her. She did
not, as they had expected, attend any of the three churches, for she
had brought with her her own Lutheran pastor. They only saw her on her
afternoon drives, a stiff little figure, thickly veiled against the
sun, sitting bolt upright in the victoria beside the crimson baroness
(crimson in face; she wore black) in whose charge she had come to
England.

They learned presently that the princess had come to Muttle Deeping for
her health; that she was delicate and her doctors feared lest she
should develop consumption; they hoped that a few weeks in the
excellent Deeping air would strengthen her. The news abated a little
the cold hostility of Erebus; but the Twins paid but little attention
to their young neighbor.

Their mother was finding the summer trying; she was sleeping badly, and
her appetite was poor. Doctor Arbuthnot put her on a light diet; and in
particular he ordered her to eat plenty of fruit. It was not the best
season for fruit: strawberries were over and raspberries were coming to
an end. Mrs. Dangerfield made shift to do with bananas. The Twins were
annoyed that this was the best that could be done to carry out the
doctor’s orders; but there seemed no help for it.

It was in the afternoon, a sweltering afternoon, after the doctor’s
visit that, as the Twins, bent on an aimless ride, were lazily wheeling
their bicycles out of the cats’ home, a sudden gleam came into the eyes
of the Terror; and he said:

“I’ve got an idea!”

An answering light gleamed in the eyes of Erebus; and she cried
joyfully; “Thank goodness! I was beginning to get afraid that nothing
was ever going to occur to us again. I thought it was the hot weather.
What is it?”

“Those Germans,” said the Terror darkly. “Now that they’ve got the
Grange, why shouldn’t we make a raid on the peach-garden. They say the
Grange peaches are better than any hothouse ones; and Watkins told me
they ripen uncommon early. They’re probably ripe now.”

“That’s a splendid idea! It will just teach those Germans!” cried
Erebus; and her piquant face was bright with the sterling spirit of the
patriot. Then after a pause she added reluctantly: “But if the princess
is an invalid, perhaps she ought to have all the peaches herself.”

“She couldn’t want all of them. Why we couldn’t. There are hundreds,”
said the Terror quickly. “And they’re the very thing for Mum. Bananas
are all very well in their way; but they’re not like real fruit.”

“Of course; Mum _must_ have them,” said Erebus with decision. “But how
are we going to get into the peach-garden? The door in the wall only
opens on the inside.”

“We’re not. I’ve worked it out. Now you just hurry up and get some big
leaves to put the peaches in. Mum will like them ever so much better
with the bloom on, though it doesn’t really make any difference to the
taste.”

Erebus ran into the kitchen-garden and gathered big soft leaves of
different kinds. When she came back she found the Terror tying the
landing-net they had borrowed from the vicar for their trout-fishing,
to the backbone of his bicycle. She put the leaves into her bicycle
basket, and they rode briskly to Muttle Deeping.

The Twins knew all the approaches to Muttle Deeping Grange well since
they had spent several days in careful scouting before they had made
their raid earlier in the summer on its strawberry beds. A screen of
trees runs down from the home wood along the walls of the gardens; and
the Twins, after coming from the road in the shelter of the home wood,
came down the wall behind that screen of trees.

About the middle of the peach-garden the Terror climbed on to a low
bough, raised his head with slow caution above the wall, and surveyed
the garden. It was empty and silent, save for a curious snoring sound
that disquieted him little, since he ascribed it to some distant pig.

He stepped on to a higher branch, leaned over the wall, and surveyed
the golden burden of the tree beneath him. The ready Erebus handed the
landing-net up to him. He chose his peach, the ripest he could see;
slipped the net under it, flicked it, lifted the peach in it over the
wall, and lowered it down to Erebus, who made haste to roll it in a
leaf and lay it gently in her bicycle basket. The Terror netted another
and another and another.

The garden was not as empty as he believed. On a garden chair in the
little lawn in the middle of it sat the Princess Elizabeth hidden from
him by the thick wall of a pear tree, and in a chair beside her, sat,
or rather sprawled, her guardian, the Baroness Frederica Von
Aschersleben, who was following faithfully the doctor’s instructions
that her little charge should spend her time in the open air, but was
doing her best to bring it about that the practise should do her as
little good as possible by choosing the sultriest and most airless spot
on the estate because it was so admirably adapted to her own
comfortable sleeping.

The baroness added nothing to the old-world charm of the garden. Her
eyes were shut, her mouth was open, her face was most painfully
crimson, and from her short, but extremely tip-tilted nose, came the
sound of snoring which the Terror had ascribed to some distant pig.

The princess was warmly—very warmly—dressed for the sweltering
afternoon and sweltering spot; little beads of sweat stood on her brow;
the story-book she had been trying to read lay face downward in her
lap; and she was looking round the simmering garden with a look of
intolerable discomfort and boredom on her pretty pale face.

Then a moving object came into the range of her vision, just beyond the
end-of the wall of pear tree—a moving object against the garden wall.
She could not see clearly what it was; but it seemed to her that a
peach rose and vanished over the top of the wall. She stared at the
part of the wall whence it had risen; and in a few seconds another
peach seemed to rise and disappear.

This curious behavior of English peaches so roused her curiosity that,
in spite of the heat, she rose and walked quietly to the end of the
wall of pear-tree. As she came beyond it, she saw, leaning over the
wall, a fair-haired boy. Even as she saw him something rose and
vanished over the wall far too swiftly for her to see that it was a
landing-net.

Surprise did not rob the Terror of his politeness; he smiled amicably,
raised his cap and said in his most agreeable tone: “How do you do?”

He did not know how much the princess had seen, and he was not going to
make admission of guilt by a hasty and perhaps needless flight, provoke
pursuit and risk his peaches.

“How do you do?” said the princess a little haughtily, hesitating.
“What are you doing up there?”

“I’m looking at the garden,” said the Terror truthfully, but not quite
accurately; for he was looking much more at the princess.

She gazed at him; her brow knitted in a little perplexed frown. She
thought that he had been taking the peaches; but she was not sure; and
his serene guileless face and limpid blue eyes gave the suspicion the
lie. She thought that he looked a nice boy.

He gazed at her with growing interest and approval—as much approval as
one could give to a girl. The Princess Elizabeth had beautiful gray
eyes; and though her pale cheeks were a little hollow, and the line
from the cheek-bone to the corner of the chin was so straight that it
made her face almost triangular, it was a pretty face. She looked
fragile; and he felt sorry for her.

“This garden’s very hot,” he said. “It’s like holding one’s face over
an oven.”

“Oh, it is,” said the princess, with impatient weariness.

“Yet there’s quite a decent little breeze blowing over the top of the
walls,” said the Terror.

The princess sighed, and they gazed at each other with curious
examining eyes. Certainly he looked a nice boy.

“I tell you what: come out into the wood. I know an awfully cool place.
You’d find it very refreshing,” said the Terror in the tone of one who
has of a sudden been happily inspired.

The princess looked back along the wall of pear tree irresolutely at
the sleeping baroness. The sight of that richly crimson face made the
garden feel hotter than ever.

“Do come. My sister’s here, and it will be very jolly in the wood—the
three of us,” said the Terror in his most persuasive tone.

The princess hesitated, and again she looked back at the sleeping but
unbeautiful baroness; then she said with a truly German frankness:

“Are you well-born?”

The Terror smiled a little haughtily in his turn and said slowly:
“Well, from what Mrs. Blenkinsop said, the Dangerfields were barons in
the Weald before they were any Hohenzollerns. And they did very well at
Crécy and Agincourt, too,” he added pensively.

The princess seemed reassured; but she still hesitated.

“Suppose the baroness were to wake?” she said.

A light of understanding brightened the Terror’s face: “Oh, is that the
baroness snoring? I thought it was a pig,” he said frankly. “She won’t
wake for another hour. Nobody snoring like that could.”

The assurance seemed to disperse the last doubts of the princess. She
cast one more look back at her crimson Argus, and said: “Very goot; I
will coom.”

She walked to the door lower down the garden wall. When she came
through it, she found the Twins wheeling their bicycles toward it. The
Terror, in a very dignified fashion, introduced Erebus to her as Violet
Anastasia Dangerfield, and himself as Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield. He
gave their full and so little-used names because he felt that, in the
case of a princess, etiquette demanded it. Then they moved along the
screen of trees, up the side of the garden wall toward the wood.

The Twins shortened their strides to suit the pace of the princess,
which was uncommonly slow. She kept looking from one to the other with
curious, rather timid, pleased eyes. She saw the landing-net that
Erebus had fastened to the backbone of the Terror’s bicycle; but she
saw no connection between it and the vanishing peaches.

They passed straight from the screen of trees through a gap into the
home wood, a gap of a size to let them carry their bicycles through
without difficulty, took a narrow, little used path into the depths of
the wood, and moved down it in single file.

“I expect you never found this path,” said the Terror to the princess
who was following closely on the back wheel of his bicycle.

“No, I haf not found it. I haf never been in this wood till now,” said
the princess.

“You haven’t been in this wood! But it’s the home wood—the jolliest
part of the estate,” cried the Terror in the liveliest surprise. “And
there are two paths straight into it from the gardens.”

“But I stay always in the gardens,” said the princess sedately. “The
Baroness Von Aschersleben does not walk mooch; and she will not that I
go out of sight of her.”

“But you must get awfully slack, sticking in the gardens all the time,”
said Erebus.

“Slack? What is slack?” said the princess.

“She means feeble,” said the Terror. “But all the same those gardens
are big enough; there’s plenty of room to run about in them.”

“But I do not run. It is not dignified. The Baroness Von Aschersleben
would be shocked,” said the princess with a somewhat prim air.

“No wonder you’re delicate,” said Erebus, politely trying to keep a
touch of contempt out of her tone, and failing.

“One can not help being delicate,” said the princess.

“I don’t know,” said the Terror doubtfully. “If you’re in the open air
a lot and do run about, you don’t _keep_ delicate. Wi

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