1 files changed, 7985 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/19043.txt b/old/19043.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c90aa9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/19043.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7985 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Terrible Twins, by Edgar Jepson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Terrible Twins
+
+Author: Edgar Jepson
+
+Illustrator: Hanson Booth
+
+Release Date: August 14, 2006 [EBook #19043]
+[This file last updated February 8, 2008]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TERRIBLE TWINS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "Cats for the cats' home!" said Sir Maurice Falconer.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TERRIBLE TWINS
+
+
+By
+
+EDGAR JEPSON
+
+
+
+Author of
+
+The Admirable Tinker, Pollyooly, etc.
+
+
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+HANSON BOOTH
+
+
+
+
+INDIANAPOLIS
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1913
+
+THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+[Updater's note: In the originally posted version of this book (August
+14, 2006), four pages (3, 4, 53, 54) were missing.  In early February
+2008, the missing pages were found, scanned and submitted by a reader
+of the original etext and incorporated into this updated version.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Chapter
+
+    I  AND CAPTAIN BASTER
+   II  GUARDIAN ANGELS
+  III  AND THE CATS' HOME
+   IV  AND THE VISIT OF INSPECTION
+    V  AND THE SACRED BIRD
+   VI  AND THE LANDED PROPRIETOR
+  VII  AND PRINGLE'S POND
+ VIII  AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING PEACHES
+   IX  AND THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM
+    X  AND THE ENTERTAINMENT OF ROYALTY
+   XI  AND THE UNREST CURE
+  XII  AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING FISHING
+ XIII  AND AN APOLOGY
+  XIV  AND THE SOUND OF WEDDING BELLS
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Cats for the cats' home!" said
+  Sir Maurice Falconer. . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"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.
+
+"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 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 demand, had forbidden them to
+use them any longer.
+
+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 Crecy 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.  Wiggins used to be
+delicate, but he isn't now."
+
+"Who is Wiggins?" said the princess.
+
+"He's a friend of ours--not so old as we are--quite a little boy," said
+Erebus in a patronizing tone which Wiggins, had he been present, would
+have resented with extreme bitterness.  "Besides, Doctor Arbuthnot told
+Mrs. Blenkinsop that if you were always in the open air, playing with
+children of your own age, you'd soon get strong."
+
+"That's what I've come to England for," said the princess.
+
+"I don't think there's much chance of your getting strong in that
+peach-garden.  It didn't feel to me like the open air at all," said the
+Terror firmly.
+
+"But it is the open air," said the princess.
+
+They came out of the narrow path they had been following into a broader
+one, and presently they turned aside from that at the foot of a steep
+and pathless bank.  The Twins started up it as if it were neither here
+nor there to them; as, indeed, it was not.
+
+But the princess stopped short, and said in a tone of dismay:
+
+"Am I to climb this?"
+
+The Terror stopped, looked at her dismayed face, set his bicycle
+against the trunk of a tree, and said:
+
+"I'll help you up."
+
+With that, dismissing etiquette from his mind, he slipped his arm round
+the slender waist of the princess, and firmly hauled her to the top of
+the bank.  He relieved her of most of the effort needed to mount it;
+but none the less she reached the top panting a little.
+
+"You certainly aren't in very good training," he said rather sadly.
+
+"Training?  What is training?" said the princess.
+
+"It's being fit," said Erebus in a faintly superior tone.
+
+"And what is being fit?" said the princess.
+
+"It's being strong--and well--and able to run miles and miles," said
+Erebus raising her voice to make her meaning clearer.
+
+"You needn't shout at her," said the Terror.
+
+"I'm trying to make her understand," said Erebus firmly.
+
+"But I do understand--when it is not the slang you are using.  I know
+English quite well," said the princess.
+
+"You certainly speak it awfully well," said the Terror politely.
+
+He went down the bank and hauled up his bicycle.  They went a little
+deeper into the wood and reached their goal, the banks of a small pool.
+
+They sat down in a row, and the princess looked at its cool water, in
+the cool green shade of the tall trees, with refreshed eyes.
+
+"This _is_ different," she said with a faint little sigh of pleasure.
+
+[Illustration: "This is different," she said.]
+
+"Yes; this is the real open air," said the Terror.
+
+"But I do get lots of open air," protested the princess.  "Why, I sleep
+with my window open--at least that much."  She held out her two
+forefingers some six inches apart.  "The baroness did not like it.  She
+said it was very dangerous and would give me the chills.  But Doctor
+Arbuthnot said that it must be open.  I think I sleep better."
+
+"We have our bedroom windows as wide open as they'll go; and then
+they're not wide enough in this hot weather," said Erebus in the tone
+of superiority that was beginning to sound galling.
+
+"I think if you took off your hat and jacket, you'd be cooler still,"
+said the Terror rather quickly.
+
+The princess hesitated a moment; then obediently she took off her hat
+and jacket, and breathed another soft sigh of pleasure.  She had quite
+lost her air of discomfort and boredom.  Her eyes were shining
+brightly; and her pale cheeks were a little flushed with the excitement
+of her situation.
+
+It is by no means improbable that the Twins, as well-brought-up
+children, were aware that it is not etiquette to speak to royal
+personages unless they first speak to you.  If they were, they did not
+let that knowledge stand in the way of the gratification of their
+healthy curiosity.  It may be they felt that in the free green wood the
+etiquette of courts was out of place.  At any rate they did not let it
+trammel them; and since their healthy curiosity was of the liveliest
+kind they submitted the princess to searching, even exhaustive,
+interrogation about the life of a royal child at a German court.
+
+They questioned her about the hour she rose, the breakfast she ate, the
+lessons she learned, the walks she took, the lunch she ate, the games
+she played, her afternoon occupations, her dolls, her pets, her tea,
+her occupations after tea, her dinner, her occupations after dinner,
+the hour she went to bed.
+
+There seemed nothing impertinent in their curiosity to the princess; it
+was only natural that every detail of the life of a person of her
+importance should be of the greatest interest to less fortunate
+mortals.  She was not even annoyed by their carelessness of etiquette
+in not waiting to be spoken to before they asked a question.  Indeed
+she enjoyed answering their questions very much, for it was seldom that
+any one displayed such a genuine interest in her; it was seldom,
+indeed, that she found herself on intimate human terms with any of her
+fellow creatures.  She had neither brothers nor sisters; and she had
+never had any really sympathetic playmates.  The children of
+Cassel-Nassau were always awed and stiff in her society; their minds
+were harassed by the fear lest they should be guilty of some appalling
+breach of etiquette.  The manner of the Twins, therefore, was a
+pleasant change for her.  They were polite, but quite unconstrained;
+and the obsequious people by whom she had always been surrounded had
+never displayed that engaging quality, save when, like the baroness,
+they were safely asleep in her presence.
+
+But her account of her glories did not have the effect on her new
+friends she looked for.  As she exposed more and more of the trammeling
+net of etiquette in which from her rising to her going to bed she was
+enmeshed, their faces did not fill with the envy she would have found
+so natural on them; they grew gloomy.
+
+At the end of the interrogation Erebus heaved a great sigh, and said
+with heart-felt conviction:
+
+"Well, thank goodness, I'm not a princess!  It must be perfectly awful!"
+
+"It must be nearly as bad to be a prince," said the Terror in the
+gloomy tone of one who has lost a dear illusion.
+
+The princess could not believe her ears; she stared at the Twins with
+parted lips and amazed incredulous eyes.  Their words had given her the
+shock of her short lifetime.  As far as memory carried her back, she
+had been assured, frequently and solemnly, that to be a princess, a
+German princess, a Hohenzollern princess, was the most glorious and
+delightful lot a female human being could enjoy, only a little less
+glorious and delightful than the lot of a German prince.
+
+"B-b-but it's sp-p-plendid to be a princess!  Everybody says so!" she
+stammered.
+
+"They were humbugging you.  You've just made it quite clear that it's
+horrid in every kind of way.  Why, you can't do any single thing you
+want to.  There's always somebody messing about you to see that you
+don't," said Erebus with cold decision.
+
+"B-b-but one is a _p-p-princess_," stammered the princess, with
+something of the wild look of one beneath whose feet the firm earth has
+suddenly given way.
+
+The Terror perceived her distress; and he set about soothing it.
+
+"You're forgetting the food," he said quickly to Erebus.  "I don't
+suppose she ever has to eat cold mutton; and I expect she can have all
+the sweets and ices she wants."
+
+"Of course," said the princess; and then she went on quickly: "B-b-but
+it isn't what you have to eat that makes it so--so--so important being
+a princess.  It's--"
+
+"But it's awfully important what you have to eat!" cried the Terror.
+
+"I should jolly well think so!" cried Erebus.
+
+The princess tried hard to get back to the moral sublimities of her
+exalted station; but the Twins would not have it.  They kept her firmly
+to the broad human questions of German cookery and sweets.  The
+princess, used to having information poured into her by many elderly
+but bespectacled gentlemen and ladies, was presently again enjoying her
+new part of dispenser of information.  Her cheeks were faintly flushed;
+and her eyes were sparkling in an animated face.
+
+In these interrogations and discussions the time had slipped away
+unheeded by the interested trio.  The crimson baroness had awakened,
+missed her little charge, and waddled off into the house in search of
+her.  A slow search of the house and gardens revealed the fact that she
+was not in them.  As soon as this was clear the baroness fell into a
+panic and insisted that the whole household should sally forth in
+search of her.
+
+The princess was earnestly engaged in an effort to make quite dear to
+the Twins the exact nature of one of the obscure kinds of German
+tartlet, a kind, indeed, only found in the principality of
+Cassel-Nassau, where the keen ears of the Terror caught the sound of a
+distant voice calling out.
+
+He rose sharply to his feet and said: "Listen!  There's some one
+calling.  I expect they've missed you and you'll have to be getting
+back."
+
+The princess rose reluctantly.  Then her face clouded; and she said in
+a tone of faint dismay: "Oh, dear!  How annoyed the baroness will be!"
+
+"You take a great deal too much notice of that baroness," said Erebus.
+
+"But I have to; she's my--my _gouvernante_," said the princess.
+
+"I don't see what good it is being a princess, if you do just what
+baronesses tell you all the time," said Erebus coldly.
+
+The princess looked at her rather helplessly; she had never thought of
+rebelling.
+
+"I don't think I should tell her that you've been with us.  She
+mightn't think we were good for you.  Some people round here don't seem
+to understand us," said the Terror suavely.
+
+The princess looked from one to the other, hesitating with puckered
+brow; and then, with a touch of appeal in her tone, she said, "Are you
+coming to-morrow?"
+
+The Twins looked at each other doubtfully.  They had no plans for the
+morrow; but they had hopes that Fortune would find them some more
+exciting occupation than discussing Germany with one of its inhabitants.
+
+At their hesitation the princess' face fell woefully; and the appeal in
+it touched the Terror's heart.
+
+"We should like to come very much," he said.
+
+The face of the princess brightened; and her grateful eyes shone on him.
+
+"I don't think I shall be able to come," said Erebus with the important
+air of one burdened with many affairs.
+
+The face of the princess did not fall again; she said: "But if your
+brother comes?"
+
+"Oh, I'll come, anyhow," said the Terror.
+
+The voice called again from the wood below, louder.
+
+"Oh, it isn't the baroness.  It's Miss Lambart," said the princess in a
+tone of relief.
+
+"You take too much notice of that baroness," said Erebus again firmly.
+"Who is Miss Lambart?"
+
+"She's my English lady-in-waiting.  I always have one when I'm in
+England, of course.  I like her.  She tries to amuse me.  But the
+baroness doesn't like her," said the princess, and she sighed.
+
+"Come along, I'll help you down the bank and take you pretty close to
+Miss Lambart.  It wouldn't do for her to know of this place.  It's our
+secret lair," said the Terror.
+
+"I see," said the princess.
+
+They walked briskly to the edge of the steep bank; and he half carried
+her down it; and he led her through the wood toward the drive from
+which Miss Lambart had called.  As they went he adjured her to confine
+herself to the simple if incomplete statement that she had been walking
+in the wood.  His last words to her, as they stood on the edge of the
+drive, were:
+
+"Don't you stand so much nonsense from that baroness."
+
+Miss Lambart called again; the princess stepped into the drive and
+found her thirty yards away.  The Terror slipped noiselessly away
+through the undergrowth.
+
+Miss Lambart turned at the sound of the princess' footsteps, and said:
+"Oh, here you are, Highness.  We've all been hunting for you.  The
+baroness thought you were lost."
+
+"I thought I would walk in the wood," said the princess demurely.
+
+"It certainly seems to have done you good.  You're looking brighter and
+fresher than you've looked since you've been down here."
+
+"The wood is real open air," said the princess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AND THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM
+
+The Terror returned to Erebus and found her stretched at her ease,
+eating a peach.
+
+"I should have liked one a good deal sooner," he said, as he took one
+from the basket.  "But I didn't like to say anything about them.  She
+mightn't have understood."
+
+"It wouldn't have mattered if she hadn't," said Erebus somewhat
+truculently.
+
+She was feeling some slight resentment that their new acquaintance had
+so plainly preferred the Terror to her.
+
+"She's not a bad kid," said the Terror thoughtfully.
+
+"She's awfully feeble.  Why, you had to carry her up this bit of a
+bank.  She's not any use to us," said Erebus in a tone of contempt.
+"In fact, if we were to have much to do with her, I expect we should
+find her a perfect nuisance."
+
+"Perhaps.  Still we may as well amuse her a bit.  She seems to be
+having a rotten time with that old red baroness and all that
+etiquette," said the Terror in a kindly tone.
+
+"She needn't stand it, if she doesn't like it.  I shouldn't," said
+Erebus coldly; then her face brightened, and she added: "I tell you
+what though: it would be rather fun to teach her to jump on that old
+red baroness."
+
+"Yes," said the Terror doubtfully.  "But I expect she'd take a lot of
+teaching.  I don't think she's the kind of kid to do much jumping on
+people."
+
+"Oh, you never know.  We can always try," said Erebus cheerfully.
+
+"Yes," said the Terror.
+
+Warmed by this noble resolve, they moved quietly out of the wood.  It
+was not so difficult a matter as it may sound to move, even encumbered
+by bicycles, about the home wood, for it was not so carefully preserved
+as the woods farther away from the Grange; indeed, the keepers paid but
+little attention to it.  The Twins moved out of it safely and returned
+home with easy minds: it did not occur to either of them that they had
+been treating a princess with singular firmness.  Nor were they at all
+troubled about the acquisition of the peaches since some curious mental
+kink prevented them from perceiving that the law of meum and tuum
+applied to fruit.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield was presented with only two peaches at tea that
+afternoon; and she took it that the Twins had ridden into Rowington and
+bought them for her there.  When two more were forthcoming for her
+dessert after dinner, she reproached them gently for spending so much
+of their salary for "overseering" on her.  The Twins said nothing.  It
+was only when two more peaches came up on her breakfast tray that she
+began to suspect that they had come by the ways of warfare and not of
+trade.  Then, having already eaten four of them, it was a little late
+to inquire and protest.  Moreover, if there had been a crime, the Twins
+had admitted her to a full share in it by letting her eat the fruit of
+it.  Plainly it was once more an occasion for saying nothing.
+
+On the next afternoon Erebus set out with the Terror to Muttle Deeping
+home wood early enough; but owing to the matter of a young rabbit who
+met them on their way, they kept the princess waiting twenty minutes.
+This was, indeed, a new experience to her; but she did not complain to
+them of this unheard-of breach of etiquette.  She was doubtful how the
+complaint would be received at any rate by Erebus.
+
+They betook themselves at once to the cool and shady pool; and since
+the sensation was no longer new and startling, the princess found it
+rather pleasant to be hauled up the bank by the Terror.  There was
+something very satisfactory in his strength.  Again they settled
+themselves comfortably on the bank of the pool.
+
+They were in the strongest contrast to one another.  Beside the clear
+golden tan of the Terror and the deeper gipsy-like brown of Erebus the
+pale face of the princess looked waxen.  The blue linen blouse, short
+serge skirt and bare head and legs of Erebus and the blue linen shirt,
+serge knickerbockers and bare head and legs of the Terror gave them an
+air not only of coolness but also of a workmanlike freedom of limb.  In
+her woolen blouse, brown serge jacket and skirt, woolen stockings and
+heavily-trimmed drooping hat the poor little princess looked a swaddled
+sweltering doll melting in the heat.
+
+She needed no pressing to take off her jacket and hat; and was pleased
+by the Terror's observing that it was just silly to wear a hat at all
+when one had such thick hair as she.  But she was some time acting on
+Erebus' suggestion that she should also pull off her stockings and be
+more comfortable still.
+
+At last she pulled them off, and for once comfortable, she began to
+tell of the fuss the excited baroness had made the day before about her
+having gone alone into such a fearful and dangerous place as the home
+wood.
+
+"I tell you what: you've spoilt that baroness," said the Terror when
+she came to the end of her tale; and he spoke with firm conviction.
+
+"But she's my _gouvernante_.  I have to do as she bids," protested the
+princess.
+
+"That's all rubbish.  You're the princess; and other people ought to do
+what you tell them; and no old baroness should make you do any silly
+thing you don't want to.  She wouldn't me," said Erebus with even
+greater conviction than the Terror had shown.
+
+"I don't think she would," said the princess with a faint sigh; and she
+looked at Erebus with envious eyes.  "But when she starts making a fuss
+and gets so red and excited, she--she--rather frightens me."
+
+"It would take a lot more than that to frighten me," said Erebus with a
+very cold ferocity.
+
+"I rather like people like that.  I think they look so funny when
+they're really red and excited," said the Terror gently.  "But what
+you've got to do is to stand up to her."
+
+"Stand up to her?" said the princess, puzzled by the idiom.
+
+"Tell her that you don't care what she says," said the Terror.
+
+"Cheek her," said Erebus.
+
+"I couldn't.  It would be too difficult," said the princess, shaking
+her head.
+
+"Of course it isn't easy at first; but you'll be surprised to find how
+soon you'll get used to shutting her up," said the Terror.  "But I
+don't believe in cheeking her unless she gets very noisy.  I believe in
+being quite polite but not giving way."
+
+"She is very noisy," said the princess.
+
+"Oh, then you'll have to shout at her.  It's the only way.  But mind
+you only have rows when you're in the right about something," said the
+Terror.  "Then she'll soon learn to leave you alone.  It's no good
+having a row when you're in the wrong."
+
+"I think it's best always to have a row," said Erebus with an air of
+wide experience.
+
+"Well, it isn't--at least it wouldn't be for the princess--she's not
+like you," said the Terror quickly.
+
+"Oh, no: not always--only when one is in the right.  I see that," said
+the princess.  "But what should I have a row about?"
+
+The Twins puckered their brows as they cudgeled their brains for a
+pretext for an honest row.
+
+Presently the Terror said: "Why don't you make them let you have some
+one to play with?  It's silly being as dull as you are.  What's the
+good of being a princess, if you haven't any friends?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried the princess; and her cheeks flushed, and her eyes
+sparkled.  "It would be nice!  You and Erebus could come to tea with me
+and sooper and loonch often and again!"
+
+The Twins looked at each other with eyes full of a sudden dismay.  It
+was not in their scheme of things as they should be that they should go
+to the Grange in the immaculate morning dress of an English boy and
+girl, and spend stiff hours in the presence of a crimson baroness.
+
+"That wouldn't do at all," said the Terror quickly.  "You had better
+not tell them anything at all about us.  They wouldn't let us come to
+the Grange; and they'd stop you coming here.  It's ever so much nicer
+meeting secretly like this."
+
+"But it would be very nice to meet at the Grange as well as here," said
+the princess, who felt strongly that she could not have enough of this
+good thing.
+
+"It couldn't be done.  They wouldn't have us at the Grange," said
+Erebus, supporting the Terror.
+
+"But why not?" said the princess in surprise.
+
+"The people about here don't understand us," said the Terror somewhat
+sadly.  "They'd think we should be bad for you."
+
+"But it is not so!  You are ever so good to me!" cried the princess
+hotly.
+
+"It's no good.  You couldn't make grown-ups see that--you know what
+they are.  No; you'd much better leave it alone, and sit tight and meet
+us here," said the Terror.
+
+The princess sat thoughtful and frowning for a little while; then she
+sighed and said: "Well, I will do what you say.  You know more about
+it."
+
+"That's all right," said the Terror, greatly relieved.
+
+There was a short silence; then he said thoughtfully: "I tell you what:
+it would be a good thing if you were to get some muscle on you.
+Suppose we taught you some exercises.  You could practise them at home;
+and soon you'd be able to do things when you were with us."
+
+"What things?" said the princess.
+
+"Oh, you'd be able to run--and jump.  Why we might even be able to
+teach you to climb," said the Terror with a touch of enthusiasm in his
+tone as the loftier heights of philanthropy loomed upon his inner
+vision.
+
+"Oh, that would be nice!" cried the princess.  Forthwith the Twins set
+about teaching her some of the exercises which go to the making of
+muscle; and the princess was a painstaking pupil.  In spite of the
+seeds of revolt they had sown in her heart, she was eager to get back
+to the peach-garden before the baroness should awake, or at any rate
+before she should have satisfied herself that her charge was not in the
+house or about the gardens.  The Terror therefore conducted her down
+the screen of trees to the door in the wall.  She had left it
+unlatched; and he pushed it open gently.  There was no sound of
+snoring: the baroness had awoke and left the garden.
+
+"I expect she is still looking for me in the house," said the princess
+calmly.  "They'd be shouting if she weren't."
+
+"Yes.  I say; do you want _all_ these peaches?" said the Terror,
+looking round the loaded walls.
+
+"Me?  No.  I have a peach for breakfast and another for lunch.  But I
+don't care for peaches much.  It's the way the baroness eats them, I
+think--the juice roonning down, you know.  And she eats six or seven
+always."
+
+"That woman's a pig.  I thought she looked like one," said the Terror
+with conviction.  "But if you don't want them all, may I have some for
+my mother?  The doctor has ordered her fruit; and she's very fond of
+peaches."
+
+"Oh, yes; take some for your mother and yourself and Erebus.  Take them
+all," said the princess with quick generosity.
+
+"Thank you; but a dozen will be heaps," said the Terror.
+
+The princess helped him gather them and lay them in a large
+cabbage-leaf; and then they bade each other good-by at the garden-gate.
+
+The Twins returned home in triumph with the golden spoil.  But when she
+was provided with two peaches for seven meals in succession, Mrs.
+Dangerfield could no longer eat them with a mind at ease, and she asked
+the Twins how they came by them.  They assured her that they had been
+given to them by a friend but that the name of the donor must remain a
+secret.  She knew that they would not lie to her; and thinking it
+likely that they came from either the squire or the vicar, both of whom
+took an uncommonly lively interest in her, judging from the fact that
+either of them had asked her to marry him more than once, she went on
+eating the peaches with a clear conscience.
+
+The next afternoon the Twins devoted themselves to strengthening the
+princess' spirit with no less ardor than they devoted themselves to
+strengthening her body.  They adjured her again and again to thrust off
+the yoke of the baroness.  The last pregnant words of Erebus to her
+were: "You just call her an old red pig, and see."
+
+Their efforts in the cause of freedom bore fruit no later than that
+very evening.  The princess was dining with the Baroness Von
+Aschersleben and Miss Lambart; and the baroness, who was exceedingly
+jealous of Miss Lambart, had interrupted her several times in her talk
+with the princess; and she had done it rudely.  The princess, who
+wanted to hear Miss Lambart talk, was annoyed.  They had reached
+dessert; and Miss Lambart was congratulating her on the improvement in
+her appetite since she had just made an excellent meal, and said that
+it must be the air of Muttle Deeping.  The baroness uttered a loud and
+contemptuous snort, and filled her plate with peaches.  The princess
+looked at her with an expression of great dislike.  The baroness
+gobbled up one peach with a rapidity almost inconceivable in a human
+being, and very noisily, and was midway through the second when the
+princess spoke.
+
+"I want some children to play with," she said.
+
+Briskly and with the sound of a loud unpleasant sob the baroness gulped
+down the other half of the peach, and briskly she said: "Zere are no
+children in zis country, your Royal Highness."
+
+It was the custom for the princess to speak and hear only English in
+England.
+
+"But I see plenty of children when I drive," said the princess.
+
+"Zey are nod children; zey are nod 'igh an' well-born," said the
+baroness in rasping tones.
+
+"Then you must find some high and well-born children for me to play
+with," said the princess.
+
+"Moost?  Moost?" cried the baroness in a high voice.  "Bud eed ees whad
+I know ees goot for you."
+
+"They're good for me," said the princess firmly.  "And you must find
+them."
+
+The baroness was taken aback by this so sudden and unexpected display
+of firmness in her little charge; her face darkened to a yet richer
+crimson; and she cried in a loud blustering voice: "Bud eed ees
+eembossible whad your royal highness ask!  Zere are no 'igh an'
+well-born children 'ere.  Zey are een Loondon."
+
+"Well, you must send for some," said the princess, who, having taken
+the first step, was finding it pleasant to be firm.
+
+"Moost?  Moost?  I do nod know whad ees 'appen to you, your Royal
+Highness.  I say eed ees eembossible!" shouted the baroness; and she
+banged on the table with her fist.
+
+"But surely her highness' request is a very natural one, Baroness; and
+there must be some nice children in the neighborhood if we were to look
+for them.  Besides, Doctor Arbuthnot said that she ought to have
+children of her own age to play with," said Miss Lambart who had been
+pitying the lonely child and seized eagerly on this chance of helping
+her to the companionship she needed.
+
+"Do nod indervere, Englanderin!" bellowed the baroness; and her crimson
+was enriched with streaks of purple.  "I am in ze charge of 'er royal
+highness; and I zay zat she does not wiz zese children blay."
+
+The fine gray eyes of the princess were burning with a somber glow.
+She was angry, and her mind was teeming with the instructions of her
+young mentors, especially with the more violent instructions of Erebus.
+
+She gazed straight into the sparkling but blood-shot eyes of the raging
+baroness, and said in a somewhat uncertain voice but clearly enough:
+
+"Old--red--peeg."
+
+Miss Lambart started in her chair; the baroness uttered a gasping
+grunt; she blinked; she could not believe her ears.
+
+"But whad--but whad--" she said faintly.
+
+"Old--red--peeg," said the princess, somewhat pleased with the effect
+of the words, and desirous of deepening it.
+
+"Bud whad ees eed zat 'appen?" muttered the bewildered baroness.
+
+"If you do not find me children quickly, I shall write to my father
+that you do not as the English doctor bids; and you were ordered to do
+everything what the English doctor bids," said the princess in a
+sinister tone.  "Then you will go back to Cassel-Nassau and the
+Baroness Hochfelden will be my _gouvernante_."
+
+The baroness ground her teeth, but she trembled; it might easily
+happen, if the letter of the princess found the grand duke of
+Cassel-Nassau in the wrong mood, that she would lose this comfortable
+well-paid post, and the hated Baroness Hochfelden take it.
+
+"Bud zere are no 'igh an' well-born children, your Royal Highness," she
+said in a far gentler, apologetic voice.
+
+The princess frowned at her and said: "Mees Lambart will find them.  Is
+it not, Mees Lambart?"
+
+"I shall be charmed to try, Highness," said Miss Lambart readily.
+
+"Do nod indervere!  I veel zose childen vind myzelf!" snapped the
+baroness.
+
+The princess rose, still quivering a little from the conflict, but
+glowing with the joy of victory.  At the door she paused to say:
+
+"And I want them soon--at once."
+
+Then, though the baroness had many times forbidden her to tempt the
+night air, she went firmly out into the garden.  The next morning at
+breakfast she again demanded children to play with.
+
+Accordingly when Doctor Arbuthnot paid his visit that morning, the
+baroness asked him what children in the neighborhood could be invited
+to come to play with the princess.  She only stipulated that they
+should be high and well-born.
+
+"Well, of course the proper children to play with her would be the
+Twins--Mrs. Dangerfield's boy and girl.  They're high and well-born
+enough.  But I doubt that they could be induced to play with a little
+girl.  They're independent young people.  Besides, I'm not at all sure
+that they would be quite the playmates for a quiet princess.  It would
+hardly do to expose an impressionable child like the princess to
+such--er--er ardent spirits.  You might have her developing a spirit of
+freedom; and you wouldn't like that."
+
+"_Mein Gott_, no!" said the baroness with warm conviction.
+
+"Then there's Wiggins--Rupert Carrington.  He's younger and quieter but
+active enough.  He'd soon teach her to run about."
+
+"But is he well-born?" said the careful baroness.
+
+"Well-born?  He's a _Carrington_," said Doctor Arbuthnot with an
+impressive air that concealed well his utter ignorance of the ancestry
+of the higher mathematician.
+
+The baroness accepted Wiggins gloomily.  When the princess, who had
+hoped for the Twins, heard that he had been chosen, she accepted him
+with resignation.  Doctor Arbuthnot undertook to arrange the matter.
+
+The disappointed princess informed the Twins of the election of
+Wiggins; and they cheered her by reporting favorably on the
+qualifications of their friend, though Erebus said somewhat sadly:
+
+"Of course, he'll insist on being an Indian chief and scalping you; he
+always does.  But you mustn't mind that."
+
+The princess thought that she would not mind it; it would at any rate
+be a change from listening monotonously to the snores of the baroness.
+
+The Twins found it much more difficult to comfort and cheer their
+fair-haired, freckled, but infuriated friend.  Not only was his
+reluctance to don the immaculate morning dress of an English young
+gentleman for the delectation of foreign princesses every whit as
+sincere as their own, but he felt the invitation to play with a little
+girl far more insulting than they would have done.  They did their best
+to soothe him and make things pleasant for the princess, pointing out
+to him the richness of the teas he would assuredly enjoy, and
+impressing on him the fact that he would be performing a noble
+charitable action.
+
+"Yes; that's all very well," said Wiggins gloomily.  "But I've been
+seeing ever such a little of you lately in the afternoons; and now I
+shall see less than ever."
+
+Naturally, he was at first somewhat stiff with the princess; but the
+stiffness did not last; they became very good active friends; and he
+scalped her with gratifying frequency.  In this way it came about that,
+in the matter of play, the princess led a double life.  She spent the
+early part of the afternoon in the wood with the Twins; and from tea
+till the dressing-bell for dinner rang she enjoyed the society of
+Wiggins.  She told no one of her friendship with the Twins; and Wiggins
+was surprised by her eagerness to hear everything about them he could
+tell.  Between them she was beginning to acquire cheerfulness and
+muscle; and she was losing her air of delicacy, but not at a rate that
+satisfied the exigent Terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+AND THE ENTERTAINMENT OF ROYALTY
+
+The time had come for the Twins to take their annual change of air.
+They took that change at but a short distance from their home, since
+the cost of a visit to the sea was more than their mother could afford.
+They were allowed to encamp for ten days, if the weather were fine, in
+the dry sandstone caves of Deeping Knoll, which rises in the middle of
+Little Deeping wood, the property of Mr. Anstruther.
+
+Kind-hearted as the Twins were, they felt that to make the journey from
+the knoll to Muttle Deeping home wood was beyond the bounds of
+philanthropy; and they broke the news to the princess as gently as they
+could.  She was so deeply grieved to learn that she was no longer going
+to enjoy their society that, in spite of the fact that she had been
+made well aware that they despised and abhorred tears, she was
+presently weeping.  She was ashamed; but she could not help it.  The
+compassionate Twins compromised; they promised her that they would try
+to come every third afternoon; and with that she had to be content.
+
+None the less on the eve of their departure she was deploring bitterly
+the fact that she would not see them on the morrow, when the Terror was
+magnificently inspired.
+
+"Look here: why shouldn't you come with us into camp?" he said eagerly.
+"A week of it would buck you up more than a month at the Grange.  You
+really do get open air camping out at the knoll."
+
+The face of the princess flushed and brightened at the splendid
+thought.  Then it fell; and she said: "They'd never let me--never."
+
+"But you'd never ask them," said the Terror.  "You'd just slip away and
+come with us.  We've kept our knowing you so dark that they'd never
+dream you were with us in the knoll caves."
+
+The princess was charmed, even dazzled, by the glorious prospect.  She
+had come to feel strongly that by far the best part of her life was the
+afternoons she spent with the Twins in the wood; whole days with them
+would be beyond the delight of dreams.  But to her unadventured soul
+the difficulties seemed beyond all surmounting.  The Twins, however,
+were used to surmounting difficulties, and at once they began
+surmounting these.
+
+"The difficult thing is not to get you there, but to keep you there,"
+said the Terror thoughtfully.  "You see, I've got to go down every day
+for milk and things, and they're sure to ask me if I've seen anything
+of you.  Of course, I can't lie about it; and then they'll not only
+take you away, but they'll probably turn us out of the caves."
+
+"That's the drawback," said Erebus.
+
+The Twins gazed round the wood seeking enlightenment.  A deep frown
+furrowed the Terror's brow; and he said: "If only you weren't a
+princess they wouldn't make half such a fuss hunting for you, and I
+might never be asked anything about you."
+
+"I should have to come to the camp incognita, of course," said the
+princess.
+
+The Terror looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared into a
+glorious smile, and he cried:
+
+"By Jove!  Of course you would!  I never thought of that!  Why, you'd
+be some one else and not the princess at all!  We shouldn't know where
+the princess was if we were asked."
+
+"Of course we shouldn't!" said Erebus, perceiving the advantage of this
+ignorance.
+
+"I generally am the Baroness von Zwettel when I travel," said the
+princess.
+
+The Terror considered the matter, again frowning thoughtfully: "I
+suppose you have to have a title.  But I think an English one would be
+best here: Lady Rowington now.  No one would ever ask us where Lady
+Rowington is, because there isn't any Lady Rowington."
+
+"Oh, yes: Lady Rowington--I would wish an English title," said the
+princess readily.
+
+"If we could only think of some way of making them think that she'd
+been stolen by gipsies, it would be safer still," said Erebus.
+
+"Gipsies don't steal children nowadays," said the Terror; and he paused
+considering.  Then he added, "I tell you what though: Nihilists
+would--at least they'd steal a princess.  Are there any Nihilists in
+Cassel-Nassau?"
+
+"I never heard of any," said the princess.  "There are thousands of
+Socialists."
+
+"Socialists will do," said the Terror cheerfully.
+
+They were quick in deciding that the princess should not join them till
+the second night of their stay in camp, to give them time to have
+everything in order.  Then they discussed her needs.  She could not
+bring away with her any clothes, or it would be plain that she had not
+been stolen.  She must share the wardrobe of Erebus.
+
+"But, no.  I have money," said the princess, thrusting her hand into
+her pocket.  "Will you not buy me clothes?"
+
+She drew out a little gold chain purse with five sovereigns in it, and
+handed it to the Terror.  He and Erebus examined it with warm
+admiration, for it was indeed a pretty purse.
+
+"We should have had to buy you a bathing-dress, anyhow.  There's a pool
+just under the knoll," said the Terror.  "How much shall we want,
+Erebus?"
+
+"You'd better have two pounds and be on the safe side," said Erebus.
+
+The Terror transferred two sovereigns from the purse of the princess to
+his own.  Then he arranged that she should meet him outside the door of
+the peach-garden at nine o'clock, or thereabouts at night.  He would
+wait half an hour that she might not have to hurry and perhaps arouse
+the suspicion that she had gone of her own free will.  He made several
+suggestions about the manner of her escape.
+
+When she left them, they rode straight to Rowington and set about
+purchasing her outfit.  They bought a short serge skirt, two linen
+shirts, a blue jersey against the evening chill, a cap, sandals,
+stockings, underclothing and a bathing-dress.  They carried the parcels
+home on their bicycles.  When she saw them on their arrival Mrs.
+Dangerfield supposed that they were parts of their own equipment.
+
+That evening the Terror worked hard at his ingenious device for
+throwing the searchers off the scent.  It was:
+
+[Illustration: Skull and Crossbones captioned "We are avenged.  A
+Desparate Socialist"]
+
+
+He went to bed much pleased with his handiwork.
+
+They spent a busy morning carrying their camping outfit to Deeping
+Knoll.  The last two hundred yards of path to it was very narrow so
+that they transported their belongings to the entrance to it in Tom
+Cobb's donkey-cart, and carried them up to the knoll on their backs.
+
+In other years their outfit had been larger, for their mother had
+encamped with them.  This year she had not cared for the effort; and
+she had also felt that ten days' holiday out of the strenuous
+atmosphere which spread itself round the Twins, would be restful and
+pleasant.  She was sure that they might quite safely be trusted to
+encamp by themselves on Deeping Knoll.  Not only were they of approved
+readiness and resource; but buried in the heart of that wood, they were
+as safe from the intrusion of evil-doers as on some desert South Sea
+isle.  She was somewhat surprised by the Terror's readiness to take as
+many blankets as she suggested.  In other years he had been disposed to
+grumble at the number she thought necessary.
+
+The Twins had carried their outfit to the knoll by lunch-time; and they
+lunched, or rather dined, with a very good appetite.  Then they began
+to arrange their belongings, which they had piled in a heap as they
+brought them up, in their proper caves.  With a break of an hour for a
+bath this occupied them till tea-time.  After tea they bathed again and
+then set about collecting fuel from the wood.  They were too tired to
+spend much time on cooking their supper; and soon after it, rolled in
+their blankets on beds of bracken, they were sleeping like logs.  They
+were up betimes, bathing.
+
+This day was far less strenuous than the day before.  They spent most
+of it in the pool or on its bank.  In the afternoon Wiggins came and
+did not leave them till seven.  Soon after eight o'clock the Terror set
+out to keep his tryst with the princess.  He took with him the
+Socialist manifesto and pinned it to the post of a wicket gate opening
+from the gardens into the park on the opposite side of the Grange to
+Deeping Knoll.  Then he came round to the door in the peach-garden wall
+two or three minutes before the clock over the stables struck nine.
+
+He had not long to wait; he heard the gentle footfall of the princess
+on the garden path, the door opened, and she came through it.  He shook
+hands with her warmly; and as they went up the screen of trees she told
+him how she had bidden the baroness and Miss Lambart good night, gone
+to her bedroom, ruffled the bed, locked the door, and slipped, unseen,
+down the stairs and out of the house.  He praised her skill; and she
+found his praise very grateful.
+
+The path to the knoll lay all the way through the dark woods; and the
+princess found them daunting.  They were full of strange noises, many
+of them eery-sounding; and in the dimness strange terrifying shapes
+seemed to move.  The Terror was not long discovering her fear, and
+forthwith put his arm round her waist and kept it there wherever the
+path was broad enough to allow it.  When she quivered to some woodland
+sound, he told her what it was and eased her mind.
+
+She was not strong enough in spite of her exercises and the active
+games with Wiggins, to make the whole of the journey over that rough
+ground at a stretch; and twice when he felt her flagging they sat down
+and rested.  The princess was no longer frightened; she still thrilled
+to the eeriness of the woods, but she felt quite safe with the Terror.
+When they rested she snuggled up against him, stared before her into
+the dark, and thought of all the heroes wandering through the forests
+of Grimm, with the sense of adventure very strong on her.  She was
+almost sorry when they came at last to the foot of the knoll and saw
+its top red in the glow of the fire Erebus was keeping bright.
+
+[Illustration: She was almost sorry when they came at last to the foot
+of the knoll.]
+
+Also Erebus had hot cocoa ready for them; and after her tiring journey
+the princess found it grateful indeed.  They sat for a while in a row
+before the glowing fire, talking of the Hartz Mountains, which the
+princess had visited.  But soon the yawns which she could not repress
+showed her hosts how sleepy she was, and the Terror suggested that she
+should go to bed.
+
+With true courtesy, the Twins had given her the best sleeping-cave to
+herself, but she displayed such a terrified reluctance to sleep in it
+alone, that her couch of bracken and her blankets were moved into the
+cave of Erebus.  After the journey and the excitement she was not long
+falling into a dreamless sleep.
+
+When she awoke next morning, she found the Terror gone to fetch milk.
+Erebus conducted her down to the pool for her morning bath.  The
+princess did not like it (she had had no experience of cold baths) but
+under the eye of Erebus she could not shrink; and in she went.  She
+came out shivering, but Erebus helped rub her to a warm glow, and she
+came to breakfast with such an appetite as she had never before in her
+life enjoyed.
+
+The knoll was indeed the ideal camping-ground for the romantic; the
+caves with which it was honeycombed lent themselves to a score of games
+of adventure; and the princess soon found that she had been called to
+an active life.  It began directly after breakfast with dish-washing;
+after that she was breathless for an hour in two excited games both of
+which meant running through the caves and round and over the knoll as
+hard as you could run and at short intervals yelling as loud as you
+could yell.  After this they put on their bathing-dresses and disported
+themselves in the pool till it was time to set about the serious
+business of cooking the dinner, which they took soon after one o'clock.
+
+The Terror kept a careful and protective eye on the princess, helping
+her, for the most part vigorously, to cover the ground at the required
+speed.  Also he turned her out of the pool, to dry and dress, a full
+half-hour before he and Erebus left it.  After dinner the princess was
+so sleepy that she could hardly keep her eyes open; and the Terror
+insisted that she should lie down for an hour.  She protested that she
+did not want to rest, that she did not want to lose a moment of this
+glorious life; but presently she yielded and was soon asleep.
+
+They were expecting Wiggins in the afternoon.  But he could be admitted
+safely into the secret, since, once he knew that the princess had
+become Lady Rowington, he would be able with sufficient truthfulness to
+profess an entire ignorance of her whereabouts.  Also he would be very
+useful, for he could bring them word if suspicion had fallen on them.
+
+At about half past two he arrived, bringing a great tale of the
+excitement of the countryside at the kidnaping of the princess.  So far
+its simple-minded inhabitants and the suite of the princess were
+content with the socialist explanation of her disappearance; and three
+counties round were being searched by active policemen on bicycles for
+some one who had seen a suspicious motor-car containing Socialists and
+a princess.  It was the general belief that she had been chloroformed
+and abducted through her bedroom window.
+
+With admirable gravity the Twins discussed with Wiggins the
+probabilities of their success and of the recovery of the princess, the
+routes by which the Socialists might have carried her off, and the
+towns in which the lair to which they had taken her might be.  At the
+end of half an hour of it the princess came out of her cave, her eyes,
+very bright with sleep, blinking in the sunlight.
+
+Wiggins cried out in surprise; and the Twins laughed joyfully.
+
+Wiggins greeted the princess politely; and then he said reproachfully:
+"You might have told me that she was coming here."
+
+"You ought to have known as soon as you heard she was missing," said
+Erebus sternly.
+
+"So I should, if I'd known you knew her at all," said Wiggins.
+
+"That's what nobody knows," said Erebus triumphantly.
+
+"And look here: she's here incognita," said the Terror.  "She's taken
+the traveling name of Lady Rowington; and she's not the princess at
+all.  So if you're asked if the princess is here, you can truthfully
+say she isn't."
+
+"Of course--I see.  This is a go!" said Wiggins cheerfully; and he
+spurned the earth.
+
+"The only chance of her being found is for somebody to come up when
+we're not expecting them and see her," said the Terror.  "So I'm going
+to block the path with thorn-bushes; and any one who comes up it will
+shout to us.  But there's no need to do that yet; nobody will think
+about us for a day or two."
+
+"No; of course they won't.  I didn't," said Wiggins.
+
+The active life persisted throughout that day and the days that
+followed.  It kept the princess always beside the Terror.  Always he
+was using his greater strength to help her lead it at the required
+speed.  Never in the history of the courts of Europe has a princess
+been so hauled, shoved, dragged, jerked, towed and lugged over rough
+ground.  On the second morning she awoke so stiff that she could hardly
+move; but by the fifth evening she could give forth an ear-piercing
+yell that would have done credit to Erebus herself.
+
+All her life the princess had been starved of affection; her mother had
+died when she was in her cradle; her father had been immersed in his
+pleasures; no one had been truly fond of her; and she had been truly
+fond of no one.  It is hardly too much to say that she was coming to
+adore the Terror.  Even at their most violent and thrilling moments his
+care for her never relaxed.  He rubbed the ache out of her bruises; he
+plastered her scratches.  He saw to it that she came out of the pool
+the moment that she looked chill.  He picked out for her the tidbits at
+their meals.  He even brushed out her hair, for the thick golden mass
+was quite beyond the management of the princess; and Erebus firmly
+refused to play the lady's-maid.  Since the Terror was one of those who
+enjoy doing most things which they are called upon to do, he presently
+forgot the unmanliness of the occupation, and began to take pleasure in
+handling the silken strands.
+
+It was on the fifth day, after a bath, when he was brushing out her
+hair in the sun on the top of the knoll that he received the severe
+shock.  Heaven knows that the princess was not a demonstrative child;
+indeed, she had never had the chance.  But he had just finished his
+task and was surveying the shining result with satisfaction, when, of a
+sudden, without any warning, she threw her arms round his neck and
+kissed him.
+
+"Oh, you _are_ nice!" she said.
+
+The Terror's ineffable serenity was for once scattered to the winds.
+He flushed and gazed round the wood with horror-stricken eyes: if any
+one should have seen it!
+
+The princess marked his trouble, and said in a tone of distress: "Don't
+you like for me to kiss you?"
+
+The Terror swallowed the lump of horror in his throat, and said,
+faintly but gallantly: "Yes--oh, rather."
+
+"Then kiss me," said the princess simply, snuggling closer to him.
+
+The despairing eyes of the Terror swept the woods; then he kissed her
+gingerly.
+
+"I _am_ fond of you, you know," said the princess in a frankly
+proprietary tone.
+
+The Terror's scattered wits at last worked.  He rose to his feet, and
+said quickly:
+
+"Yes; let's be getting to the others."
+
+The princess rose obediently.
+
+But the ice was broken; and the kisses of the princess, if not
+frequent, were, at any rate, not rare.  The Terror at first endured
+them; then he came rather to like them.  But he strictly enjoined
+discretion on her; it would never do for Erebus to learn that she
+kissed him.  The princess had no desire that Erebus, or any one else
+for that matter, should learn; but discretion and kisses have no
+natural affinity; and, without their knowing it, Wiggins became aware
+of the practise.
+
+He had always observed that the Twins had no secrets from each other;
+and he never dreamed that he was letting an uncommonly awkward cat out
+of a bag when during a lull in the strenuous life, he said to Erebus:
+
+"I suppose the Terror's in love with the princess, kissing her like
+that.  I think it's awfully silly."  And he spurned the earth.
+
+Erebus grabbed his arm and cried fiercely: "He never does!"
+
+Wiggins looked at her in some surprise; her face was one dusky flush;
+and her eyes were flashing.  He had seen her angry often enough, but
+never so angry as this; and he saw plainly that he had committed a
+grievous indiscretion.
+
+"Perhaps she kissed him," he said quickly.
+
+"He'd never let her!" cried Erebus fiercely.
+
+"Perhaps they didn't," said Wiggins readily.
+
+"You know they did!" cried Erebus yet more fiercely.
+
+"I may have made a mistake.  It's quite easy to make a mistake about
+that kind of thing," said Wiggins.
+
+Erebus would not have it, and very fiercely she dragged piecemeal from
+his reluctant lips the story of the surprised idyl.  He had seen the
+princess with an arm round the Terror's neck, and they had kissed.
+
+With clenched fists and blazing eyes Erebus, taking the line of the
+least resistance, sought the princess.  She found her lying back
+drowsily against a sunny bank.
+
+Erebus came to an abrupt stop before her and cried fiercely: "Princess
+or no princess, you shan't kiss the Terror!"
+
+The drowsiness fled; and the princess sat up.  Her gray eyes darkened
+and sparkled.  She had never made a face in her life; it is not
+improbable, seeing how sheltered a life she had led, that she was
+ignorant that faces were made; but quite naturally she made a hideous
+face at Erebus, and said:
+
+"I shall!"
+
+"If you do, I'll smack you!" cried Erebus; and she ground her teeth.
+
+For all her Hohenzollern blood, the princess was a timid child; but by
+a gracious provision of nature even the timidest female will fight in
+the matter of a male.  She met Erebus' blazing eyes squarely and said
+confidently:
+
+"He won't let you.  And if you do he'll smack you--much harder!"
+
+Had the princess been standing up, Erebus would have smacked her then
+and there.  But she was sitting safely down; and the Queensberry rules
+only permit you to strike any one standing up.  Erebus forgot them,
+stooped to strike, remembered them, straightened herself, and with a
+really pantherous growl dashed away in search of the Terror.
+
+She found him examining and strengthening the barrier of thorns; and
+she cried:
+
+"I know all about your kissing the princess!  I never heard of such
+silly babyishness!"
+
+It was very seldom, indeed, that the Terror showed himself sensible to
+the emotions of his sister; but on this occasion he blushed faintly as
+he said:
+
+"Well, what harm is there in it?"
+
+"It's babyish!  It's what mollycoddles do!  It's girlish!  It's--"
+
+The Terror of a sudden turned brazen; he said loudly and firmly:
+
+"You mind your own business!  It isn't babyish at all!  She's asked me
+to marry her; and when we're grown up I'm going to--so there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+AND THE UNREST CURE
+
+Erebus knew her brother well; she perceived that she was confronted by
+what she called his obstinacy; and though his brazen-faced admission
+had raised her to the very height of amazement and horror, she uttered
+no protest.  She knew that protest would be vain, that against his
+obstinacy she was helpless.  She wrung her hands and turned aside into
+the wood, overwhelmed by his defection from one of their loftiest
+ideals.
+
+Then followed a period of strain.  She assumed an attitude of very
+haughty contempt toward the errant pair, devoted herself to Wiggins,
+and let them coldly alone.  From this attitude Wiggins was the chief
+sufferer: the Terror had the princess and the princess had the Terror;
+Erebus enjoyed her display of haughty contempt, but Wiggins missed the
+strenuous life, the rushing games, in which you yelled so heartily.  As
+often as he could he stole away from the haughty Erebus and joined the
+errant pair.  It is to be feared that the princess found the kisses
+sweeter for the ban Erebus had laid on them.
+
+No one in the Deepings suspected that the missing princess was on
+Deeping Knoll.  There had been sporadic outbursts of suspicion that the
+Twins had had a hand in her disappearance.  But no one had any reason
+to suppose that they and the princess had even been acquainted.  Doctor
+Arbuthnot, indeed, questioned both Wiggins and the Terror; but they
+were mindful of the fact that Lady Rowington (they were always very
+careful to address her as Lady Rowington) and not the princess, was at
+the knoll, and were thus able to assure him with sufficient
+truthfulness that they could not tell him where the princess was.  The
+bursts of suspicion therefore were brief.
+
+But there was one man in England in whom suspicion had not died down.
+Suspicion is, indeed, hardly the word for the feeling of Sir Maurice
+Falconer in the matter.  When he first read in his _Morning Post_ of
+the disappearance of the Princess Elizabeth of Cassel-Nassau from
+Muttle Deeping Grange he said confidently to himself: "The Twins
+again!" and to that conviction his mind clung.
+
+It was greatly strengthened by a study of the reproduction of the
+Socialist manifesto on the front page of an enterprising halfpenny
+paper.  He told himself that Socialists are an educated, even
+over-educated folk, and if one of them did set himself to draw a skull
+and cross-bones, the drawing would be, if not exquisite, at any rate
+accurate and unsmudged; that it was highly improbable that a Socialist
+would spell desperate with two "a's" in an important document without
+being corrected by a confederate.  On the other hand the drawing of the
+skull and cross-bones seemed to him to display a skill to which the
+immature genius of the Terror might easily have attained, while he
+could readily conceive that he would spell desperate with two "a's" in
+any document.
+
+But Sir Maurice was not a man to interfere lightly in the pleasures of
+his relations; and he would not have interfered at all had it not been
+for the international situation produced by the disappearance of the
+princess.  As it was he was so busy with lunches, race meetings,
+dinners, theater parties, dances and suppers that he was compelled to
+postpone intervention till the sixth day, when every Socialist organ
+and organization from San Francisco eastward to Japan was loudly
+disavowing any connection with the crime, the newspapers of England and
+Germany were snarling and howling and roaring and bellowing at one
+another, and the Foreign Office and the German Chancellery were wiring
+frequent, carefully coded appeals to each other to invent some
+plausible excuse for not mobilizing their armies and fleets.  Even then
+Sir Maurice, who knew too well the value of German press opinion, would
+not have interfered, had not the extremely active wife of a cabinet
+minister consulted him about the easiest way for her to sell twenty
+thousand pounds' worth of consols.  He disliked the lady so strongly
+that after telling her how she could best compass her design, he felt
+that the time had come to ease the international situation.
+
+With this end in view he went down to Little Deeping.  His conviction
+that the Twins were responsible for the disappearance of the princess
+became certitude when he learned from Mrs. Dangerfield that they were
+encamped on Deeping Knoll, and had been there since the day before that
+disappearance.  But he kept that certitude to himself, since it was his
+habit to do things in the pleasantest way possible.
+
+He forthwith set out across the fields and walked through the home wood
+and park to Muttle Deeping Grange.  He gave his card to the butler and
+told him to take it straight to Miss Lambart, with whom he was on terms
+of friendship rather than of acquaintance; and in less than three
+minutes she came to him in the drawing-room.
+
+She was looking anxious and worried; and as they shook hands he said:
+"Is this business worrying you?"
+
+"It is rather.  You see, though the Baroness Von Aschersleben was in
+charge of the princess, I am partly responsible.  Besides, since I'm
+English, they keep coming to me to have all the steps that are being
+taken explained; and they want the same explanation over and over
+again.  Since the archduke came it has been very trying.  I think that
+he is more of an imbecile than any royalty I ever met."
+
+"I'm sorry to hear that they've been worrying you like this.  If I'd
+known, I'd have come down and stopped it earlier," said Sir Maurice in
+a tone of lively self-reproach.
+
+"Stop it?  Why, what can you do?" cried Miss Lambart, opening her eyes
+wide in her surprise.
+
+"Well, I have a strong belief that I could lead you to your missing
+princess.  But it's only a belief, mind.  So don't be too hopeful."
+
+Miss Lambart's pretty face flushed with sudden hope:
+
+"Oh, if you could!" she cried.
+
+"Put on your strongest pair of shoes, for I think that it will be rough
+going part of the way, and order a motor-car, or carriage; if you can,
+for the easier part; and we'll put my belief to the test," said Sir
+Maurice briskly.
+
+Miss Lambart frowned, and said in a doubtful tone: "I shan't be able to
+get a carriage or car without a tiresome fuss.  They're very unpleasant
+people, you know.  Could we take the baroness with us?  She'll _have_
+to be carried in something."
+
+"Is she very fat?"
+
+"Very."
+
+"Then she'd never get to the place I have in mind," said Sir Maurice.
+
+"Is it very far?  Couldn't we walk to it?"
+
+"It's about three miles," said Sir Maurice.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing--at least not for me.  But you?" said Miss Lambart,
+who had an utterly erroneous belief that Sir Maurice was something of a
+weakling.
+
+"I can manage it.  Your companionship will stimulate my flagging
+limbs," said Sir Maurice.  "Indeed, a real country walk on a warm and
+pleasant afternoon will be an experience I haven't enjoyed for years."
+
+Miss Lambart was not long getting ready; and they set out across the
+park toward the knoll which rose, a rounded green lump, above the
+surface of the distant wood.  Sir Maurice had once walked to it with
+the Twins; and he thought that his memory of the walk helped by a few
+inquiries of people they met would take him to it on a fairly straight
+course.  It was certainly very pleasant to be walking with such a
+charming companion through such a charming country.
+
+As soon as they were free of the gardens Miss Lambart said eagerly:
+"Where are we going to?  Where do you think the princess is?"
+
+"You've been here a month.  Haven't you heard of the Dangerfield
+twins?" said Sir Maurice.
+
+"Oh, yes; we were trying to find children to play with the princess;
+and Doctor Arbuthnot mentioned them.  But he said that they were not
+the kind of children for her, though they were the only high and
+well-born ones the baroness was clamoring for, in the neighborhood.  He
+seemed to think that they would make her rebellious."
+
+"Then the princess didn't know them?" said Sir Maurice quickly.
+
+"No."
+
+"I wonder," said Sir Maurice skeptically.
+
+"We found a little boy called Rupert Carrington to play with her--a
+very nice little boy," said Miss Lambart.
+
+"Wiggins!  The Twins' greatest friend!  Well, I'll be shot!" cried Sir
+Maurice; and he laughed.
+
+"But do you mean to say that you think that these children have
+something to do with the princess' disappearance?  How old are they?"
+said Miss Lambart in an incredulous tone, for fixed very firmly in her
+mind was the belief that the princess had been carried off by the
+Socialists and foreigners.
+
+"I never know whether they are thirteen or fourteen.  But I do know
+that nothing out of the common happens in the Deepings without their
+having a hand in it.  I have the honor to be their uncle," said Sir
+Maurice.
+
+"But they'd never be able to persuade her to run away with them.  She's
+a timid child; and she has been coddled and cosseted all her life till
+she is delicate to fragility," Miss Lambart protested.
+
+"If it came to a matter of persuasion, my nephew would persuade the
+hind-leg, or perhaps even the fore-leg, off a horse," said Sir Maurice
+in a tone of deep conviction.  "But it would not necessarily be a
+matter of persuasion."
+
+"But what else could it be--children of thirteen or fourteen!" cried
+Miss Lambart.
+
+"I assure you that it might quite easily have been force," said Sir
+Maurice seriously.  "My nephew and niece are encamped on Deeping Knoll.
+It is honeycombed with dry sand-stone caves for the most part
+communicating with one another.  I can conceive of nothing more likely
+than that the idea of being brigands occurred to one or other of them;
+and they proceeded to kidnap the princess to hold her for ransom.  They
+might lure her to some distance from the Grange before they had
+recourse to force."
+
+"It sounds incredible--children," said Miss Lambart.
+
+"Well, we shall see," said Sir Maurice cheerfully.  Then he added in a
+more doubtful tone; "If only we can take them by surprise, which won't
+be so easy as it sounds."
+
+Miss Lambart feared that they were on a wild goose chase.  But it was a
+very pleasant wild goose chase; she was very well content to be walking
+with him through this pleasant sunny land.  When presently he turned
+the talk to matters more personal to her, she liked it better still.
+He was very sympathetic: he sympathized with her in her annoyance at
+having had to waste so much of the summer on this tiresome _corvee_ of
+acting as lady-in-waiting on the little princess; for, thanks to the
+domineering jealousy of the baroness, it had been a tiresome _corvee_
+indeed, instead of the pleasant occupation it might have been.  He
+sympathized with her in her vexation that she had been prevented by
+that jealousy from improving the health or spirits of the princess.
+
+He was warmly indignant when she told him of the behavior of the
+baroness and the archduke during the last few days.  The baroness had
+tried to lay the blame of the disappearance of the princess on her; and
+the archduke, a vast, sun-shaped, billowy mass of fat, infuriated at
+having been torn from the summer ease of his Schloss to dash to
+England, had been very rude indeed.  She was much pleased by the warmth
+of Sir Maurice's indignation; but she protested against his making any
+attempt to punish them, for she did not see how he could do it, without
+harming himself.  But she agreed with him that neither the grand duke,
+nor the baroness deserved any consideration at her hands.
+
+Their unfailing flow of talk shortened the way; and they soon were in
+the broad aisle of the wood from which the narrow, thorn-blocked path
+led to the knoll.  Sir Maurice recognized the path; but he did not take
+it.  He knew that the Twins were far too capable not to have it
+guarded, if the princess were indeed with them.  He led the way into
+the wood on the right of it, and slowly, clearing the way for her
+carefully, seeing to it that she did not get scratched, or her frock
+get torn, he brought her in a circuit round to the very back of the
+knoll.
+
+They made the passage in silence, careful not to tread on a twig, Sir
+Maurice walking a few feet in front, and all the while peering
+earnestly ahead through the branches.  Now and again a loud yell came
+from the knoll; and once a chorus of yells.  Finding that her coldness
+(the Terror frankly called it sulking) had no effect whatever on her
+insensible brother or the insensible princess, Erebus had put it aside;
+and the strenuous life was once more in full swing.
+
+Once after an uncommonly shrill and piercing yell Miss Lambart said in
+an astonished whisper:
+
+"That was awfully like the princess' voice."
+
+"I thought you said she was delicate," said Sir Maurice.
+
+"So she was," said Miss Lambart firmly.
+
+Thanks to the careful noiselessness of their approach, they came unseen
+and unheard to the screen of a clump of hazels at the foot of the
+knoll, from which they could see the entrance of five caves in its
+face.  They waited, watching it.
+
+It was silent; there was no sign of life; and Sir Maurice was beginning
+to wonder whether they had, after all, been espied by his keen-eyed
+kin, when a little girl, with a great plait of very fair hair hanging
+down her back, came swiftly out of one of the bottom caves and slipped
+into a clump of bushes to the right of it.
+
+"The princess!" said Miss Lambart; and she was for stepping forward,
+but Sir Maurice caught her wrist and checked her.
+
+Almost on the instant an amazingly disheveled Wiggins appeared stealing
+in a crouching attitude toward the entrance to the cave.
+
+"That nice little boy, Rupert Carrington," said Sir Maurice.
+
+Wiggins had almost gained the entrance to the cave when, with an
+ear-piercing yell, the princess sprang upon him and locked her arms
+round his neck; they swayed, yelling in anything but unison, and came
+to the ground.
+
+"Delicate to fragility," muttered Sir Maurice.
+
+"Whatever has she been doing to herself?" said Miss Lambart faintly,
+gazing at her battling yelling charge with amazed eyes.
+
+"You don't know the Twins," said Sir Maurice.
+
+On his words Erebus came flying down the face of the knoll at a
+breakneck pace, yelling as she came, and flung herself upon the
+battling pair.  As far as the spectators could judge she and the
+princess were rending Wiggins limb from limb; and they all three yelled
+their shrillest.  Then with a yell the Terror leaped upon them from the
+cave and they were all four rolling on the ground while the aching
+welkin rang.
+
+Suddenly the tangle of whirling limbs was dissolved as Erebus and
+Wiggins tore themselves free, gained their feet and fled.  The princess
+and the Terror sat up, panting, flushed and disheveled.  The princess
+wriggled close to the Terror, snuggled against him, and put an arm
+round his neck.
+
+"It was splendid!" she cried, and kissed him.
+
+Unaware of the watching eyes, he submitted to the embrace with a very
+good grace.
+
+"Well, I never!" said Miss Lambart.
+
+"These delicate children," said Sir Maurice.  "But it's certainly a
+delightful place for lovers.  I'm so glad we've found it."
+
+He was looking earnestly at Miss Lambart; and she felt that she was
+flushing.
+
+"Come along!" she said quickly.
+
+They came out of their clump, about fifteen yards from their quarry.
+
+The quick-eyed Terror saw them first.  He did not stir; but a curious,
+short, sharp cry came from his throat.  It seemed to loose a spring in
+the princess.  She shot to her feet and stood prepared to fly,
+frowning.  The Terror rose more slowly.
+
+"Good afternoon, Highness.  I've come to take you back to the Grange,"
+said Miss Lambart.
+
+"I'm not going," said the princess firmly.
+
+"I'm afraid you must.  Your father is there; and he wants you," said
+Miss Lambart.
+
+"No," said the princess yet more firmly; and she took a step sidewise
+toward the mouth of the cave.
+
+The Terror nodded amiably to his uncle and put his hands in his
+pockets; he wore the detached air of a spectator.
+
+"But if you don't come of yourself, we shall have to carry you," said
+Miss Lambart sternly.
+
+The Terror intervened; he said in his most agreeable tone: "I don't see
+how you can.  You can't touch a princess you know.  It would be
+_lese-majeste_.  She's told me all about it."
+
+The perplexity spread from the face of Miss Lambart to the face of Sir
+Maurice Falconer; he smiled appreciatively.  But he said: "Oh, come;
+this won't do, Terror, don't you know!  Her highness will _have_ to
+come."
+
+"I don't see how you're going to get her.  The only person who could
+use force is the prince himself, and I don't think he could be got up
+to the knoll.  He's too heavy.  I've seen him.  And if you did get him
+up, I don't really think he'd ever find her in these caves," said the
+Terror in the dispassionate tone of one discussing an entirely
+impersonal matter.
+
+"Anyhow, I'm not going," said the princess with even greater firmness.
+
+Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice gazed at each other in an equal perplexity.
+
+"You see, there isn't any real reason why she shouldn't stay here,"
+said the Terror.  "She came to England to improve her health; and she's
+improving it ever so much faster here than she did at the Grange.  You
+can _see_ how improved it is.  She eats nearly as much as Erebus."
+
+"She has certainly changed," said Miss Lambart in a tart tone which
+showed exactly how little she found it a change for the better.
+
+"The Twins have a transforming effect on the young," said Sir Maurice
+in a tone of resignation.
+
+"I am much better," said the princess.  "I'm getting quite strong, and
+I can run ever so fast."
+
+She stretched out a tanning leg and surveyed it with an air of
+satisfaction.
+
+"But it's nonsense!" said Miss Lambart.
+
+"But what can you _do_?" said the Terror gently.
+
+"I'll chance the _lese-majeste_!" cried Miss Lambart; and she sprang
+swiftly forward.
+
+The princess bolted into the cave and up it.  Miss Lambart followed
+swiftly.  The cave ended in a dim passage, ten feet down, the passage
+forked into three dimmer passages.  Miss Lambart stopped short and
+tried to hear from which of them came the sound of the footfalls of the
+retiring princess.  It came from none of the three; the floor of the
+eaves was covered with sound-deadening sand.  Miss Lambart walked back
+to the entrance of the cave.
+
+"She has escaped," she said in a tone of resignation.
+
+"Well, I really don't see any reason for you to put yourself about for
+the sake of that disagreeable crew at the Grange.  You have done more
+than you were called on to do in finding her.  You can leave the
+catching of her to them.  There's nothing to worry about: it's quite
+clear that this camping-out is doing her a world of good," said Sir
+Maurice in a comforting tone.
+
+"Yes; there is that," said Miss Lambart.
+
+"Let me introduce my nephew.  Hyacinth Dangerfield--better, much
+better, known as the Terror--to you," Said Sir Maurice.
+
+The Terror shook hands with her, and said: "How do you do?  I've been
+wanting to know you: the princess--I mean Lady Rowington--likes you
+ever so much."
+
+Miss Lambart was appeased.
+
+"Perhaps you could give us some tea?  We want it badly," said Sir
+Maurice.
+
+"Yes, I can.  We only drink milk and cocoa, of course.  But we have
+some tea, for Mum walked up to have tea with us yesterday," said the
+Terror.
+
+"I take it that she saw nothing of the princess," said Sir Maurice.
+
+"Oh, no; she didn't see Lady Rowington.  You must remember that she's
+Lady Rowington here, and not the princess at all," said the Terror.
+
+"Oh?  I see now how it was that when you were asked at home, you knew
+nothing about the princess," said Sir Maurice quickly.
+
+"Yes; that was how," said the Terror blandly.
+
+They had not long to wait for their tea, for the Twins had had their
+kettle on the fire for some time.  Sir Maurice and Miss Lambart enjoyed
+the picnic greatly.  On his suggestion an armistice was proclaimed.
+Miss Lambart agreed to make no further attempt to capture the princess;
+and she came out of hiding and took her tea with them.
+
+Miss Lambart was, indeed, pleased with, at any rate, the physical
+change in the princess, induced by her short stay at the knoll: she was
+a browner, brighter, stronger child.  Plainly, too, she was a more
+determined child; and while, for her own part, Miss Lambart approved of
+that change also, she was quite sure that it would not be approved by
+the princess' kinsfolk and train.  But she was somewhat distressed that
+the legs of the princess should be marred by so many and such deep
+scratches.  She had none of the experienced Twins' quickness to see and
+dodge thorns.  She took Miss Lambart's sympathy lightly enough; indeed
+she seemed to regard those scratches as scars gained in honorable
+warfare.
+
+Miss Lambart saw plainly that the billowy archduke would have no little
+difficulty in recovering her from this fastness; and since she was
+assured that this green wood life was the very thing the princess
+needed, she was resolved to give him no help herself.  She was pleased
+to learn that she was in no way responsible for the princess'
+acquaintance with the Twins; that she had made their acquaintance and
+cultivated their society while the careless baroness slept in the
+peach-garden.
+
+At half past five Sir Maurice and Miss Lambart took their leave of
+their entertainers and set out through the wood.  They had not gone a
+hundred yards before a splendid yelling informed them that the
+strenuous life had again begun.
+
+Miss Lambart had supposed that they would return straight to Muttle
+Deeping Grange with the news of their great discovery.  But she found
+that Sir Maurice had formed other plans.  They were both agreed that no
+consideration was owing to the billowy archduke.  His manners deprived
+him of any right to it.  Accordingly, he took her to Little Deeping
+post-office, and with many appeals to her for suggestions and help
+wrote two long telegrams.  The first was to the editor of the Morning
+Post, the second was to the prime minister.  In both he set forth his
+discovery of the princess happily encamped with young friends in a
+wood, and her reasons for running away to them.  The postmistress
+despatched them as he wrote them, that they might reach London and ease
+the international situation at once.  Since both the editor and the
+prime minister were on friendly and familiar terms with him, there was
+no fear that the telegrams would fail of their effect.
+
+Then he took Miss Lambart to Colet House, to make the acquaintance of
+Mrs. Dangerfield, and to inform her how nearly the Twins had plunged
+Europe into Armageddon.  Mrs. Dangerfield received the news with
+unruffled calm.  She showed no surprise at all; she only said that she
+had found it very strange that a princess should vanish at Muttle
+Deeping and the Twins have no hand in it.  She perceived at once that
+the princess had quite prevented any disclosure by assuming the name of
+Lady Rowington.
+
+Miss Lambart found her very charming and attractive, and was in no
+haste to leave such pleasant companionship for the dull and unpleasant
+atmosphere of Muttle Deeping Grange.  It was past seven therefore when
+the Little Deeping fly brought her to it; and she went to the archduke
+with her news.
+
+She found him in the condition of nervous excitement into which he
+always fell before meals, too excited, indeed, to listen to her with
+sufficient attention to understand her at the first telling of her
+news.  He was some time understanding it, and longer believing it.  It
+annoyed him greatly.  He was taking considerable pleasure in standing
+on a pedestal before the eyes of Europe as the bereaved Hohenzollern
+sire.  His first, and accurate, feeling was that Europe would laugh
+consumedly when it learned the truth of the matter.  His second feeling
+was that his noble kinsman, who had been saying wonderful, stirring
+things about the Terror's manifesto and the stolen princess, would be
+furiously angry with him.
+
+He began to rave himself, fortunately in his own tongue of which Miss
+Lambart was ignorant.  Then when he grew cooler and paler his
+oft-repeated phrase was: "Eet must be 'ushed!"
+
+Miss Lambart did not tell him that Sir Maurice had taken every care
+that the affair should not be hushed up.  She did not wish every blow
+to strike him at once.  Then the dinner-bell rang; and in heavy haste
+he rolled off to the dining-room.
+
+Miss Lambart was betaking herself to her bedroom to dress, when the
+archduke's equerry, the young mustached Count Zerbst came running up
+the stairs, bidding her in the name of his master come to dinner at
+once, as she was.  She took no heed of the command, dressed at her
+ease, and came down just as the archduke, perspiring freely after his
+struggle with the hors-d'oeuvres, soup and fish, was plunging upon his
+first entree.
+
+He ate it with great emphasis; and as he ate it he questioned her about
+the place where his daughter was encamped and the friends she was
+encamped with.  Miss Lambart described the knoll and its position as
+clearly as she could, and of the Twins she said as little as possible.
+Then he asked her with considerable acerbity why she had not exercised
+her authority and brought the princess back with her.
+
+Miss Lambart said that she had no authority over the princess; and that
+if she had had it, the princess would have disregarded it wholly, and
+that it was impossible to haul a recalcitrant Hohenzollern through
+miles of wood by force, since the persons of Hohenzollerns were
+sacrosanct.
+
+The archduke said that the only thing to do was to go himself and
+summon home his truant child.  Miss Lambart objected that it would mean
+hewing expensively a path through the wood wide enough to permit his
+passage, and it was improbable that the owner of the wood would allow
+it.  Thereupon the baroness volunteered to go.  Miss Lambart with
+infinite pleasure explained that for her too an expensive path must be
+hewn, and went on to declare that if they reached the knoll, there was
+not the slightest chance of their finding the princess in its caves.
+
+The archduke frowned and grunted fiercely in his perplexity.  Then he
+struck the table and cried:
+
+"Count Zerbst shall do eet!  To-morrow morning!  You shall 'eem lead to
+ze wood.  'E shall breeng 'er."
+
+Miss Lambart protested that to wander in the Deeping woods with a
+German count would hardly be proper.
+
+"Brobare?  What ees 'brobare'?" said the archduke.
+
+"_Convenable_," said Miss Lambart.
+
+The archduke protested that such considerations must not be allowed to
+militate against his being set free to return to Cassel-Nassau at the
+earliest possible moment.  Miss Lambart said that they must.  In the
+end it was decided that a motor-car should be procured from Rowington
+and that Miss Lambart should guide the archduke and the count to the
+entrance of the path to the knoll, the count should convey to the
+princess her father's command to return to the Grange, and if she
+should refuse to obey, he should haul her by force to the car.
+
+Miss Lambart made no secret of her strong conviction that he would
+never set eyes, much less hands, on the princess.  Count Zerbst's
+smooth pink face flushed rose-pink all round his fierce little
+mustache, which in some inexplicable, but unfortunate, fashion
+accentuated the extraordinary insignificance of his nose; his small
+eyes sparkled; and he muttered fiercely something about "sdradegy."  He
+looked at Miss Lambart very unamiably.  He felt that she was not
+impressed by him as were the maidens of Cassel-Nassau; and he resented
+it.  He resolved to capture the princess at any cost.
+
+The archduke fumed furiously to find, next morning in the _Morning
+Post_ the true story of his daughter's disappearance; and he was fuming
+still when the car came from Rowington.  It was a powerful car and a
+weight-carrier; Miss Lambart, who had telephoned for it, had been
+careful to demand a weight-carrier.  With immense fuss the archduke
+disposed himself in the back of the tonneau which he filled with
+billowy curves.  The moment he was settled in it Miss Lambart sprang to
+the seat beside the driver, and insisted on keeping it that she might
+the more easily direct his course.
+
+They were not long reaching the wood; and the chauffeur raised no
+objection to taking the car up the broad turfed aisle from which ran
+the path to the knoll.  At the entrance of it the count stepped out of
+the car; and the archduke gave him his final instructions with the air
+of a Roman father; he was to bring the princess in any fashion, but he
+was to bring her at once.
+
+In a last generous outburst he cried: "Pooll 'er by the ear!  Bud
+breeng 'er."
+
+The count said that he would, and entered the path with a resolute and
+martial air.  Miss Lambart was not impressed by it.  She thought that
+in his tight-fitting clothes of military cut and his apparently
+tighter-fitting patent leather boots he looked uncommonly out of place
+under the green wood trees.  She remembered how lightly the Twins and
+the princess went; and she had the poorest expectation of his getting
+near any of them.  Also, as they had come up the aisle of the woods she
+had been assailed by a late but serious doubt, whether a
+weight-carrying motor-car was quite the right kind of vehicle in which
+to approach the lair of the Twins with hostile intent.  Its powerful,
+loud-throbbing engine had seemed to her to advertise their advent with
+all the competence of a trumpet.
+
+Her doubt was well-grounded.  The quick ears of Erebus were the first
+to catch its throbbing note, and that while it was still two hundred
+yards from the entrance of the path to the knoll.  Ever since the
+departure of Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice the Twins had been making
+ready against invasion, conveying their provisions and belongings to
+the secret caves.
+
+The secret caves had not been secret before the coming of the Twins to
+the knoll.  They were high up on the outer face of it, airy and well
+lighted by two inaccessible holes under an overhanging ledge.  But the
+entrance to them was by a narrow shaft which rose sharply from a cave
+in the heart of the knoll.  On this shaft the Twins had spent their
+best pains for two and a half wet days the year before; and they had
+reduced some seven or eight feet of it to a passage fifteen inches high
+and eighteen inches broad.  The opening into this passage could,
+naturally, be closed very easily; and then, in the dim light, it was
+hard indeed to distinguish it from the wall of the cave.  It had been a
+somewhat difficult task to get their blankets and provisions through so
+narrow a passage; but it had been finished soon after breakfast.
+
+They were on the alert for invaders; and as soon as they were quite
+sure that the keen ears of Erebus had made no mistake and that a car
+was coming up the board aisle, the princess and the Terror squirmed
+their way up to the secret caves; and Erebus closed the passage behind
+them, and with small chunks filled in the interstices between the
+larger pieces of stone so that it looked more than ever a part of the
+wall of the cave.  Then she betook herself to a point of vantage among
+the bushes on the face of the knoll, from which she could watch the
+entrance of the path and the coming of the invaders.
+
+The archduke, lying back at his ease in the car, and smoking an
+excellent cigar, spoke with assurance of catching the one-fifteen train
+from Rowington to London and the night boat from Dover to Calais.  Miss
+Lambart wasted no breath encouraging him in an expectation based on the
+efforts of Count Zerbst on the knoll.  She stepped out of the car and
+strolled up and down on the pleasant turf.  Presently she saw a figure
+coming down the aisle from the direction of Little Deeping; when it
+came nearer, with considerable pleasure she recognized Sir Maurice.
+
+When he came to them she presented him to the archduke as the
+discoverer of his daughter's hiding-place.  The archduke, mindful of
+the fact that Sir Maurice had given the true story of the disappearance
+to the world, received him ungraciously.  Miss Lambart at once told Sir
+Maurice of the errand of Count Zerbst and of her very small expectation
+that anything would come of it.  Sir Maurice agreed with her; and the
+fuming archduke assured them that the count was the most promising
+soldier in the army of Cassel-Nassau.  Then Sir Maurice suggested that
+they should go to the knoll and help the count.  Miss Lambart assented
+readily; and they set out at once.  They skirted the barriers of thorns
+in the path and came to the knoll.  It was quiet and seemed utterly
+deserted.
+
+They called loudly to the count several times; but he did not answer.
+Miss Lambart suggested that he was searching the caves and that they
+should find him and help him search them; they plunged into the caves
+and began to hunt for him.  They did not find the count; neither did
+they find the princess nor the Twins.  They shouted to him many times
+as they traversed the caves; but they had no answer.
+
+This was not unnatural, seeing that he left the knoll just before they
+reached it.  He had mounted the side of it, calling loudly to the
+princess.  He had gone through half a dozen caves, calling loudly to
+the princess.  No answer had come to his calling.  He had kept coming
+out of the labyrinth on to the side of the knoll.  At one of these
+exits, to his great joy, he had seen the figure of a little girl,
+dressed in the short serge skirt and blue jersey he had been told the
+princess was wearing, slipping through the bushes at the foot of the
+knoll.  With a loud shout he had dashed down it in pursuit and plunged
+after her into the wood.  Her sunbonnet was still in sight ahead among
+the bushes, and by great good fortune he succeeded in keeping it in
+sight.  Once, indeed, when he thought that he had lost it for good and
+all, it suddenly reappeared ahead of him; and he was able to take up
+the chase again.  But he did not catch her.  Indeed he did not lessen
+the distance between them to an extent appreciable by the naked eye.
+For a delicate princess she was running with uncommon speed and
+endurance.  Considering his dress and boots and the roughness of the
+going, he, too, was running with uncommon speed and endurance.  It was
+true that his face was a very bright red and that his so lately stiff,
+tall, white collar lay limply gray round his neck.  But he was not near
+enough to his quarry to be mortified by seeing that she was but faintly
+flushed by her efforts and hardly perspiring at all.  All the while he
+was buoyed up by the assurance that he would catch her in the course of
+the next hundred yards.
+
+Then his quarry left the wood, by an exceedingly small gap, and ran
+down a field path toward the village of Little Deeping.  By the time
+the count was through the gap she had a lead of a hundred yards.  To
+his joy, in the open country, on the smoother path, he made up the lost
+ground quickly.  When they reached the common, he was a bare forty
+yards behind her.  He was not surprised when in despair she left the
+path and bolted into the refuge of an old house that stood beside it.
+
+Mopping his hot wet brow he walked up the garden path with a victorious
+air, and knocked firmly on the door.  Sarah opened it; and he demanded
+the instant surrender of the princess.  Sarah heard him with an
+exasperating air of blank bewilderment.  He repeated his demand more
+firmly and loudly.
+
+Sarah called to Mrs. Dangerfield: "Please, mum: 'ere's a furrin
+gentleman asking for a princess.  I expect as it's that there missing
+one."
+
+"Do nod mock!  She 'ees 'ere!" cried the count fiercely.
+
+Then Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the dining-room where she had been
+arranging flowers, and came to the door.
+
+"The princess is not here," she said gently.
+
+"But I haf zeen 'er!  She haf now ad once coom!  She 'ides!" cried the
+count.
+
+At that moment Erebus came down the hall airily swinging her sunbonnet
+by its strings.  The eyes of the count opened wide; so did his mouth.
+
+"I expect he means me.  At least he's run after me all the way from the
+knoll here," said Erebus in a clear quiet voice.
+
+The count's eyes returned to their sockets; and he had a sudden
+outburst of fluent German.  He did not think that any of his hearers
+could understand that portion of his native tongue he was using; he
+hoped they could not; he could not help it if they did.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield looked from him to Erebus thoughtfully.  She did not
+suppose for a moment that it was mere accident that had caused the
+count to take so much violent exercise on such a hot day.  She was
+sorry for him.  He looked so fierce and young and inexperienced to fall
+foul of the Twins.
+
+Erebus caught her mother's thoughtful eye.  At once she cried
+resentfully: "How could I possibly tell it was the sunbonnet which made
+him think I was the princess?  He never asked me who I was.  He just
+shouted once and ran after me.  I was hurrying home to get some salad
+oil and get back to the knoll by lunch."
+
+"Yes, you would run all the way," said Mrs. Dangerfield patiently.
+
+"Well, you'd have run, too, Mum, with a foreigner running after you!
+Just look at that mustache!  It would frighten anybody!" cried Erebus
+in the tone of one deeply aggrieved by unjust injurious suspicions.
+
+"Yes, I see," said her mother with undiminished patience.
+
+She invited the count to come in and rest and get cool; and she allayed
+his fine thirst with a long and very grateful whisky and soda.  He
+explained to her at length, three times, how he had come to mistake
+Erebus for the flying princess, for he was exceedingly anxious not to
+appear foolish in the eyes of such a pretty woman.  Erebus left them
+together; she made a point of taking a small bottle of salad oil to the
+knoll.  They had no use for salad oil indeed; but it had been an
+after-thought, and she owed it to her conscience to take it.  That
+would be the safe course.
+
+In the meantime the archduke was sitting impatiently in the car,
+looking frequently at his watch.  He had expected the count to return
+with the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour.  Then he
+had expected Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice to return with the count and
+the princess in, at the longest, a quarter of an hour.  None of them
+returned.  The princess was sitting on a heap of bracken in the highest
+of the secret caves, and the Terror was taking advantage of this
+enforced quiet retirement to brush out her hair.  The count sat
+drinking whisky and soda and explained to Mrs. Dangerfield that he had
+not really been deceived by the sunbonnet and that he was very pleased
+that he had been deceived by it, since it had given him the pleasure of
+her acquaintance.  Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice sat on a bank and
+talked seriously about everything and certain other things, but chiefly
+about themselves and each other.
+
+So the world wagged as the archduke saw the golden minutes which lay
+between him and the one-fifteen slipping away while his daughter
+remained uncaught.  He chafed and fumed.  His vexation grew even more
+keen when he came to the end of his cigar and found that the
+thoughtless count had borne away the case.  He appealed to the
+chauffeur for advice; but the chauffeur, a native of Rowington and
+ignorant of Beaumarchais, could give him none.
+
+At half past twelve the archduke rose to his full height in the car,
+bellowed: "Zerbst!  Zerbst!  Zerbst!" and sank down again panting with
+the effort.
+
+[Illustration: The archduke bellowed: "Zerbst!  Zerbst!  Zerbst!"]
+
+The chauffeur looked at him with compassionate eyes.  The archduke's
+bellow, for all his huge round bulk, was but a thin and reedy cry.  No
+answer came to it; no one came from the path to the knoll.
+
+"P'raps if I was to give him a call, your Grace," said the chauffeur,
+somewhat complacent at displaying his knowledge of the right way to
+address an archduke.
+
+"Yes, shout!" said the archduke quickly.
+
+The chauffeur rose to his full height in the car and bellowed: "Zerbst!
+Zerbst!  Zerbst!"
+
+No answer came to the call; no one came from the path to the knoll.
+
+In three minutes the archduke was grinding his teeth in a black fury.
+
+Then with an air of inspiration he cried: "I shout--you shout--all ad
+vonce!"
+
+"Every little 'elps," said the chauffeur politely.
+
+With that they both rose to their full height in the car and together
+bellowed: "Zerbst!  Zerbst!  Zerbst!"
+
+No answer came to it; no one came from the path to the knoll.
+
+On his sunny bank on the side of the knoll Sir Maurice said carelessly:
+"He seems to be growing impatient."
+
+"He isn't calling us.  And it's no use our going back without either
+the princess or the count," said Miss Lambart quickly.
+
+"Not the slightest," said Sir Maurice; and he drew her closer, if that
+were possible, to him and kissed her.
+
+To this point had their cooperation in the search for the princess and
+their discussion of everything and certain other things ripened their
+earlier friendship.  They, or rather Sir Maurice, had even been
+discussing the matter of being married at an early date.
+
+"I don't think I shall let you go back to the Grange at all.  They
+don't treat you decently, you know--not even for royalties," he went on.
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't do not to go back--at any rate for to-night--though,
+of course, there's no point in my staying longer, since the princess
+isn't there," said Miss Lambart.
+
+"You don't know: perhaps Zerbst has caught her by now and is hauling
+her to her circular sire," said Sir Maurice.  "The Twins can not be
+successful all the time."
+
+"We ought to go and search those caves thoroughly," said Miss Lambart.
+
+"That wouldn't be the slightest use," said Sir Maurice in a tone of
+complete certainty.  "If the princess is in the caves, she is not in an
+accessible one.  But as a matter of fact she is quite as likely, or
+even likelier, to be at the Grange.  The Twins are quite intelligent
+enough to hide princesses in the last place you would be likely to look
+for them.  It's no use our worrying ourselves about her; besides, we're
+very comfortable here.  Why not stay just as we are?"
+
+They stayed there.
+
+But the archduke's impatience was slowly rising to a fury as the
+minutes that separated him from the one-fifteen slipped away.  At ten
+minutes to one he was seized by a sudden fresh fear lest the searchers
+should be so long returning as to make him late for lunch; and at once
+he despatched the chauffeur to find them and bring them without delay.
+
+The chauffeur made no haste about it.  He had heard of the caves on
+Deeping Knoll and had always been curious to see them.  Besides, he
+made it a point of honor not to smoke on duty; he had not had a pipe in
+his mouth since eleven o'clock; and he felt now off duty.  He explored
+half a dozen caves thoroughly before he came upon Miss Lambart and Sir
+Maurice and gave them the archduke's message.  They joined him in his
+search for Count Zerbst, going through the caves and calling to him
+loudly.
+
+The one-fifteen had gone; and the hour of lunch was perilously near.
+The face of the archduke was dark with the dread that he would be late
+for it.  There was a terrifying but sympathetic throbbing not far from
+his solar plexus.
+
+Every two or three minutes he rose to his full height in the car and
+bellowed: "Zerbst!  Zerbst!  Zerbst!"
+
+Still no answer came to the call; no one came from the path to the
+knoll.
+
+Then at the very moment at which on more fortunate days he was wont to
+sink heavily, with his mouth watering, into a large chair before a
+gloriously spread German table, he heard the sound of voices; and the
+chauffeur, Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice came out of the path to the
+knoll.
+
+They told the duke that they had neither seen nor heard anything of the
+princess, her hosts, or Count Zerbst.  The archduke cursed his equerry
+wheezily but in the German tongue, and bade the chauffeur get into the
+car and drive to the Grange as fast as petrol could take him.
+
+Sir Maurice bade Miss Lambart good-by, saluted the archduke, and the
+car went bumping down the turfed aisle.  Once in the road the
+chauffeur, anxious to make trial at an early moment of the archducal
+hospitality, let her rip.  But half a mile down the road, they came
+upon a slow-going, limping wayfarer.  It was Count Zerbst.  After a
+long discussion with Mrs. Dangerfield he had decided that since Erebus
+had slipped away back to the knoll, it would be impossible for him to
+find his way to it unguided; and he had set out for Muttle Deeping
+Grange.  In the course of his chase of Erebus and his walk back his
+patent leather boots had found him out with great severity; and he was
+indeed footsore.  He stepped into the grateful car with a deep sigh of
+relief.
+
+A depressed party gathered round the luncheon table; Miss Lambart alone
+was cheerful.  The archduke had been much shaken by his terrors and
+disappointments of the morning.  Count Zerbst had acquired a deep
+respect for the intelligence of the young friends of the princess; and
+he had learned from Mrs. Dangerfield, who had discussed the matter with
+Sir Maurice, that since her stay at the knoll was doing the princess
+good, and was certainly better for her than life with the crimson
+baroness at the Grange, she was not going to annoy and discourage her
+charitable offspring by interfering in their good work for trivial
+social reasons.  The baroness was bitterly angry at their failure to
+recover her lost charge.
+
+They discussed the further measures to be taken, the archduke and the
+baroness with asperity, Count Zerbst gloomily.  He made no secret of
+the fact that he believed that, if he dressed for the chase and took to
+the woods, he would in the end find and capture the princess, but it
+might take a week or ten days.  The archduke cried shame upon a
+strategist of his ability that he should be baffled by children for a
+week or ten days.  Count Zerbst said sulkily that it was not the
+children who would baffle him, but the caves and the woods they were
+using.  At last they began to discuss the measure of summoning to their
+aid the local police; and for some time debated whether it was worth
+the risk of the ridicule it might bring upon them.
+
+Miss Lambart had listened to them with distrait ears since she had
+something more pleasant to give her mind to.  But at last she said with
+some impatience: "Why can't the princess stay where she is?  That
+open-air life, day and night, is doing her a world of good.  She is
+eating lots of good food and taking ten times as much exercise as ever
+she took in her life before."
+
+"Eembossible!  Shall I live in a cave?" cried the baroness.
+
+"It doesn't matter at all where you live.  It is the princess we are
+considering," said Miss Lambart unkindly, for she had come quite to the
+end of her patience with the baroness.
+
+"Drue!" said the archduke quickly.
+
+"Shall eet zen be zat ze princess live ze life of a beast in a gave?"
+cried the baroness.
+
+"She isn't," said Miss Lambart shortly.  "In fact she's leading a far
+better and healthier and more intelligent life than she does here.  The
+doctor's orders were never properly carried out."
+
+"Ees zat zo?" said the archduke, frowning at the baroness.
+
+"Eengleesh doctors!  What zey know?  Modern!" cried the baroness
+scornfully.
+
+In loud and angry German the archduke fell furiously upon the baroness,
+upbraiding her for her disobedience of his orders.  The baroness
+defended herself loudly, alleging that the princess would by now be
+dying of a galloping consumption had she had all the air and water the
+doctors had ordered her.  But the archduke stormed on.  At last he had
+some one on whom he could vent his anger with an excellent show of
+reason; and he vented it.
+
+Presently, for the sake of Miss Lambart's counsel in the matter, they
+returned to the English tongue and discussed seriously the matter of
+the princess remaining at the knoll.  They found many objections to it,
+and the chief of them was that it was not safe for three children to be
+encamped by themselves in the heart of a wood.
+
+Miss Lambart grew tired of assuring them that the Twins were more
+efficient persons than nine Germans out of ten; and at last she said:
+
+"Well, Highness, to set your fears quite at rest, I will go and stay at
+the knoll myself.  Then you can go back to Cassel-Nassau with your mind
+at ease; and I will undertake that the princess comes to you in better
+health than if she had stayed on here."
+
+"Bud 'ow would she be zafer wiz a young woman, ignorant and--" cried
+the baroness, furious at this attempt to usurp her authority.
+
+"Goot!" cried the archduke cutting her short; and his face beamed at
+the thought of escaping forthwith to his home.  "Eet shall be zo!  And
+ze baroness shall go alzo to Cassel-Nassau zo zoon az I zend a lady who
+do as ze doctors zay."
+
+So it was settled; and Miss Lambart was busy for an hour collecting
+provisions, arranging that fresh provisions should be brought to the
+path to the knoll every morning and preparing and packing the fewest
+possible number of garments she would need during her stay.
+
+Then she bade the relieved archduke good-by; and set out in the
+Rowington car to the knoll.  Not far from the park gates she met Sir
+Maurice strolling toward the Grange, and took him with her.  At the
+entrance of the path to the knoll they took the baskets of provisions
+and Miss Lambart's trunk from the car, and dismissed it.  Then they
+went to the knoll.
+
+It was silent; there were no signs of the presence of man about it.
+But after Sir Maurice had shouted three times that they came in
+peace-bearing terms, Erebus and Wiggins came out of one of the caves
+above them and heard the news.  She made haste to bear it to the Terror
+and the princess who received it with joy.  They had already been
+cooped up long enough in the secret caves and were eager to plunge once
+more into the strenuous life.  They welcomed Miss Lambart warmly; and
+the princess was indeed pleased to have her fears removed and her
+position at the knoll secure.
+
+They made Miss Lambart one of themselves and admitted her to a full
+share of the strenuous life.  She played her part in it manfully.  Even
+Erebus, who was inclined to carp at female attainments, was forced to
+admit that as a brigand, an outlaw, or a pirate she often shone.
+
+But Sir Maurice, who was naturally a frequent visitor, never caught her
+engaged in the strenuous life.  Indeed, on his arrival she disappeared;
+and always spent some minutes after his arrival removing traces of the
+speed at which she had been living it, and on cooling down to life on
+the lower place.  Both of them found the knoll a delightful place for
+lovers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+AND THE MUTTLE DEEPING FISHING
+
+Since the strenuous life was found to be so strengthening to the
+princess, the Twins stayed in camp a week longer than had been in the
+beginning arranged.  Thrown into such intimate relations with Miss
+Lambart, it was only natural that they should grow very friendly with
+her.  It was therefore a bitter blow to Erebus to find that she was not
+only engaged to their Uncle Maurice but also about to be married to him
+in the course of the next few weeks.  She grumbled about it to the
+Terror and did not hesitate to assert that his bad example in the
+matter of the princess had put the idea of love-making into these older
+heads.  Then, in a heart to heart talk, she strove earnestly with Miss
+Lambart, making every effort to convince her that love and marriage
+were very silly things, quite unworthy of those who led the strenuous
+life.  She failed.  Then she tried to persuade Sir Maurice of that
+plain fact, and failed again.  He declared that it was his first duty,
+as an uncle, to be married before his nephew, and that if he were not
+quick about it the Terror would certainly anticipate him.  Erebus
+carried his defense to the Terror with an air of bitter triumph; and
+there was a touch of disgusted misanthropy in her manner for several
+days.  The princess on the other hand found the engagement the most
+natural and satisfactory thing in the world.  Her only complaint was
+that she and the Terror were not old enough to be married on the same
+day as Miss Lambart.
+
+Probably Miss Lambart and Sir Maurice enjoyed the life at the knoll
+even more than the children, for the felicity of lovers is the highest
+felicity, and the knoll is the ideal place for them.  Sir Maurice
+arrived at it not so very much later, considering his urban habit, than
+sunrise; and he did not leave it till long after sunset.  But the
+pleasantest days will come to an end; and the camp was broken up, since
+the archduke's tenancy of the Grange expired, and the princess must
+return to Germany.  She was bitterly grieved at parting with the
+Terror, and assured him that she would certainly come to England the
+next summer, or even earlier, perhaps at Christmas, to see him again.
+It seemed not unlikely that after her short but impressive association
+with the Twins she would have her way about it.  Nevertheless, in spite
+of her exhaustive experience of the strenuous life, and of the firm
+ideals of those who led it, at their parting she cried in the most
+unaffected fashion.
+
+Soon after her departure from the Grange the Twins learned that Sir
+James Morgan, its owner, had returned from Africa, where he had for
+years been hunting big game, and proposed to live at Muttle Deeping, at
+any rate for a while.  It had always been their keen desire to fish the
+Grange water, for it had been carefully preserved and little fished all
+the years Sir James had been wandering about the world.  But Mr.
+Hilton, the steward of the Grange estate, had always refused their
+request.  He believed that their presence would be good neither for the
+stream, the fish, nor the estate.
+
+But now that they were no longer dealing with an underling whom they
+felt to be prejudiced, but with the owner himself, they thought that
+they might be able to compass their desire.  Also they felt that the
+sooner they made the attempt to do so the better: Sir James might hear
+unfavorable accounts of them, if they gave him time to consort freely
+with his neighbors.  Therefore, with the help of their literary
+mainstay, Wiggins, they composed a honeyed letter to him, asking leave
+to fish the Grange water.  Sir James consulted Mr. Hilton about the
+letter, received an account of the Twins from him which made him loath
+indeed to give them leave; and since he had used a pen so little for so
+many years that it had become distasteful to him to use it at all, he
+left their honeyed missive unanswered.
+
+The Twins waited patiently for an answer for several days.  Then it was
+slowly borne in upon them that Sir James did not mean to answer their
+letter at all; and they grew very angry indeed.  Their anger was in
+close proportion to the pains they had spent on the letter.  The name
+of Sir James was added to the list of proscribed persons they carried
+in their retentive minds.
+
+It did not seem likely that they would get any chance of punishing him
+for the affront he had put on them.  Scorching, in his feverish,
+Central African way, along the road to Rowington in a very powerful
+motor-car, he looked well beyond their reach.  But Fortune favors the
+industrious who watch their chances; and one evening Erebus came
+bicycling swiftly up to the cats' home, and cried:
+
+"As I came over Long Ridge I saw Sir James Morgan poaching old
+Glazebrook's water!"
+
+The Terror did not cease from carefully considering the kitten in his
+hands, for he was making a selection to send to Rowington market.
+
+"Are you sure?" he said calmly.  "It's a long way from the ridge to the
+stream."
+
+"Not for my eyes!" said Erebus with some measure of impatience in her
+tone.  "I'm quite sure that it was Sir James; and I'm quite sure that
+it was old Glazebrook's meadow.  Lend me your handkerchief."
+
+The handkerchief that the Terror lent her might have easily been of a
+less pronounced gray; but Erebus mopped her beaded brow with it in a
+perfect content.  She had ridden home as fast as she could ride with
+her interesting news.
+
+"I wish I'd seen him too," said the Terror thoughtfully.
+
+"It's quite enough for me to have seen him!" said Erebus with some heat.
+
+"It would be better if we'd both seen him," said the Terror firmly.
+
+"It's such beastly cheek his poaching himself after taking no notice of
+our letter!" said Erebus indignantly.
+
+"Yes, it is," said the Terror.
+
+She went on to set forth the enormity of the conduct of their neighbor
+at considerable length.  The Terror said nothing; he did not look to be
+listening to her.  In truth he was considering what advantage might be
+drawn from Sir James' transgression.
+
+At last he said: "The first thing to do is for both of us to catch him
+poaching."
+
+Erebus protested; but the Terror carried his point, with the result
+that two evenings later they were in the wood above the trout-stream,
+stretched at full length in the bracken, peering through the hedge of
+the wood at Sir James Morgan so patiently and vainly fishing the stream
+below.
+
+"He'll soon be at the boundary fence," said the Terror in a hushed
+voice of quiet satisfaction.
+
+"If only he goes on catching nothing on this side of it!" said Erebus
+who kept wriggling in a nervous impatience.
+
+"It's on the other side of it they're rising," said the Terror in a
+calmly hopeful tone.
+
+Sir James, unconscious of those eagerly gazing eyes, made vain cast
+after vain cast.  He was a big game hunter; he had given but little
+time and pains to this milder sport; and he came to the fence at which
+his water ceased and that of Mr. Glazebrook began, with his basket
+still empty of trout.  He looked longingly at his neighbor's water; as
+the Terror had said, the trout in it were rising freely.  Then the
+watchers saw him shrug his shoulders and turn back.
+
+"He's not going to poach, after all!" cried Erebus in a tone of acute
+disappointment.
+
+"Look here: are you really quite sure you saw him poaching at all?
+Long Ridge is a good way off," said the Terror looking across to it.
+
+"I did.  I tell you he was half-way down old Glazebrook's meadow," said
+Erebus firmly.
+
+"It's very disappointing," said the Terror, frowning at the disobliging
+fisherman; then he added with philosophic calm: "Well, it can't be
+helped; we've got to go on watching him every evening till he does.  If
+he's poached once, he'll poach again."
+
+"Look!" said Erebus, gripping his arm.
+
+Sir James had stopped fishing and was walking back to the boundary
+fence.  He stood for a while beside the gap in it, hesitating, scanning
+the little valley down which the stream ran, with his keen hunter's
+eyes.  It is to be feared that he had been too long used to the
+high-handed methods that prevail in the ends of the earth where big
+game dwell, to have a proper sense of the sanctity of his neighbor's
+fish.  Moreover, Mr. Glazebrook was guilty of the practise of netting
+his water and sending the trout, alive in cans, to a London restaurant.
+Sir James felt strongly that it was his duty as a sportsman to give
+them the chance of making a sportsmanlike end.
+
+But Mr. Glazebrook was an uncommonly disagreeable man; and since
+Glazebrook farm marched with the western meadows of the Morgans, the
+Morgans and the Glazebrooks had been at loggerheads for at least fifty
+years.  Assuredly the farmer would prosecute Sir James, if he caught
+him poaching.
+
+Yet the valley and the meadows down the stream were empty of human
+beings; and as for the wood, there would be no one but his own keeper
+in the wood.  Doubtless that keeper would, from the abstract point of
+view, regard poaching with abhorrence.  But he would perceive that his
+master was doing a real kindness to the Glazebrook trout by giving them
+that chance of making a sportsman-like end.  At any rate the keeper
+would hold his tongue.
+
+Sir James climbed through the gap.
+
+The Twins breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief; and Erebus said in a
+tone of triumph: "Well, he's gone and done it now."
+
+"Yes, we've got him all right," said the Terror in a tone of calm
+thankfulness.
+
+Fortune favored the unscrupulous; and in the next forty minutes Sir
+James caught three good fish.
+
+He had just landed the third when the keen eyes of Erebus espied a
+figure coming up the bank of the stream two meadows away.
+
+"Look!  There's old Glazebrook!  He'll catch him!  Won't it be fun?"
+she cried, wriggling in her joy.
+
+The Terror gazed thoughtfully at the approaching figure; then he said:
+"Yes: it would be fun.  There'd be no end of a row.  But it wouldn't be
+any use to us.  I'm going to warn him."
+
+With that he sent a clear cry of "Cave!" ringing down the stream.
+
+In ten seconds Sir James was back on his own land.
+
+The Twins crawled through the bracken to a narrow path, went swiftly
+and noiselessly down it, and through a little gate on to the high road.
+
+As he set foot on it the Terror said with cold vindictiveness: "We'll
+teach him not to answer our letters."
+
+He climbed over a gate into a meadow on the other side of the road,
+took their bicycles one after the other from behind the hedge, and
+lifted them over the gate.  They reached home in time for dinner.
+
+During the meal Mrs. Dangerfield asked how they had been spending the
+time since tea; and the Terror said, quite truthfully, that they had
+been for a bicycle ride.  She did not press him to be more particular
+in his account of their doings, though from Erebus' air of subdued
+excitement and expectancy she was aware that some important enterprise
+was in hand; she had no desire to put any strain on the Terror's
+uncommon power of polite evasion.
+
+She was not at all surprised when, at nine o'clock, she went out into
+the garden and called to them that it was bedtime, to find that they
+were not within hearing.  She told herself that she would be lucky if
+she got them to bed by ten.  But she would have been surprised, indeed,
+had she seen them, half an hour earlier, slip out of the back door, in
+a condition of exemplary tidiness, dressed in their Sunday best.
+
+They wheeled their bicycles out of the cats' home quietly, mounted,
+rode quickly down the road till they were out of hearing of the house,
+and then slackened their pace in order to reach their destination cool
+and tidy.  They timed their arrival with such nicety that as they
+dismounted before the door of Deeping Hall, Sir James Morgan, in the
+content inspired by an excellent dinner, was settling himself
+comfortably in an easy chair in his smoking-room.
+
+They mounted the steps of the Court without a tremor: they were not
+only assured of the justice of their cause, they were assured that it
+would prevail.  A landed proprietor who preserves his pheasants and his
+fish with the usual strictness, _can not_ allow himself to be
+prosecuted for poaching.
+
+The Terror rang the bell firmly; and Mawley, the butler, surprised at
+the coming of visitors at so late an hour, opened the door himself.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Mawley, we want to see Sir James on important
+business," said the Terror with a truly businesslike air.
+
+Mawley had come to the Grange in the train of the Princess Elizabeth;
+and since he found the Deeping air uncommonly bracing, he had permitted
+Sir James to keep him on at the Grange after her return to
+Cassel-Nassau.  He had made the acquaintance of the Twins during the
+last days of her stay, after the camp had been broken up, and had
+formed a high opinion of their ability and their manners.  Moreover, of
+a very susceptible nature, he had a warm admiration of Mrs. Dangerfield
+whom he saw every Sunday at Little Deeping church.
+
+None the less he looked at them doubtfully, and said in a reproachful
+tone: "It's very late, Master Terror.  You can't expect Sir James to
+see people at this hour."
+
+"I know it's late; but the business is important--very important," said
+the Terror firmly.
+
+Mawley hesitated.  His admiration of Mrs. Dangerfield made him desirous
+of obliging her children.  Then he said:
+
+"If you'll sit down a minute, I'll tell Sir James that you're here."
+
+"Thank you," said the Terror; and he and Erebus came into the great
+hall, sat down on a couch covered by a large bearskin, and gazed round
+them at the arms and armor with appreciative eyes.
+
+Mawley found Sir James lighting a big cigar; and told him that Master
+and Miss Dangerfield wished to see him on business.
+
+"Oh?  They're the two children who wrote and asked me for leave to
+fish.  But Hilton told me that they were the most mischievous little
+devils in the county, so I took no notice of their letter," said Sir
+James.
+
+"Well, being your steward, Sir James, Mr. Hilton would be bound to tell
+you so.  But it's my belief that, having the name for it, a lot of
+mischief is put down to them which they never do.  And after all
+they're Dangerfields, Sir James; and you couldn't expect them to behave
+like ordinary children," said Mawley in the tone and manner of a
+persuasive diplomat.
+
+"Well, I don't see myself giving them leave to fish," said Sir James.
+"There are none too many fish in the stream as it is; and a couple of
+noisy children won't make those easier to catch.  But I may as well
+tell them so myself; so you may bring them here."
+
+Mawley fetched the Twins and ushered them into the smoking-room.  They
+entered it with the self-possessed air of persons quite sure of
+themselves, and greeted Sir James politely.
+
+He was somewhat taken aback by their appearance and air, for his
+steward had somehow given him the impression that they were thick,
+red-faced and robustious.  He felt that these pleasant-looking young
+gentlefolk could never have really earned their unfortunate reputation.
+There must be a mistake somewhere.
+
+The Twins were, on their part also, far more favorably impressed by him
+than they had looked to be; his lean tanned face, with the rather large
+arched nose, the thin-lipped melancholy mouth, not at all hidden by the
+small clipped mustache, and his keen eyes, almost as blue as those of
+the Terror, pleased them.  He looked an uncommonly dependable baronet.
+
+"Well, and what is this important matter you wished to see me about?"
+he said in a more indulgent tone than he had expected to use.
+
+"We saw you in Glazebrook's meadow this afternoon--poaching," said the
+Terror in a gentle, almost deprecatory tone.
+
+Sir James sat rather more upright in his chair, with a sudden sense of
+discomfort.  He had not connected this visit with his transgression.
+
+"And you caught three fish," said Erebus in a sterner voice.
+
+"Oh?  Then it was one of you who called 'Cave!' from the wood?" said
+Sir James.
+
+"Yes; we didn't want old Glazebrook to catch you," said the Terror.
+
+"Oh--er--thanks," said Sir James in a tone of discomfort.
+
+"That wouldn't have been any use to us," said the Terror.
+
+"Of use to you?" said Sir James.
+
+"Yes; if he'd caught you, there wouldn't be any reason why we should
+fish your water," said the Terror.
+
+Sir James looked puzzled:
+
+"But is there any reason now?" he said.
+
+"Yes.  You see, you were poaching," said the Terror in a very gentle
+explanatory voice.
+
+"And you caught three fish," said Erebus in something of the manner of
+a chorus in an Athenian tragedy.
+
+Sir James sat bolt upright with a sudden air of astonished
+enlightenment:
+
+"Well, I'm--hanged if it isn't blackmail!" he cried.
+
+"Blackmail?" said the Terror in a tone of pleasant animation.  "Why,
+that's what the Scotch reavers used to do!  I never knew exactly what
+it was."
+
+"And we're doing it.  That is nice," said Erebus, almost preening
+herself.
+
+"But this is disgraceful!  If you'd been village children--but
+gentlefolk!" cried Sir James with considerable heat.
+
+"Well, the Douglases were gentlefolk; and they blackmailed," said the
+Terror in a tone of sweet reason.
+
+"Poaching's a misdemeanor; blackmailing's a kind of stealing," said
+Erebus virtuously, forgetting for the moment her mother's fur stole.
+
+"Poaching's a misdemeanor; blackmailing's a felony," said Sir James
+loftily.
+
+The distinction was lost on the Twins; and Erebus said with conviction:
+"Poaching's worse."
+
+Sir James hated to be beaten; and he looked from one to the other with
+very angry eyes.  The Twins wore a cold imperturbable air.  Their
+appearance no longer pleased him.
+
+"It's your own fault entirely," said the Terror coldly.  "If you'd been
+civil and answered our letter, even refusing, we shouldn't have
+bothered about you.  But you didn't take any notice of it--"
+
+"And it was beastly cheek," said Erebus.
+
+"You couldn't expect us to stand that kind of thing.  So we kept an eye
+on you and caught you poaching," said the Terror.
+
+"Without any excuse for it.  You've plenty of fishing of your own,"
+said Erebus severely.
+
+"And if I don't give you leave to fish my water, you're going to sneak
+to the police, are you?" said Sir James in a tone of angry disgust.
+
+The Terror flushed and with a very cold dignity said: "We aren't going
+to do anything of the kind; and we don't want any leave to fish your
+water at all.  We're just going to fish it; and if you go sneaking to
+the police and prosecuting us, then after you've started it you'll get
+prosecuted yourself by old Glazebrook.  That's what we came to say."
+
+"And that'll teach you to be polite and answer people next time they
+write to you," said Erebus in a tone of cold triumph.
+
+On her words they rose; and while Sir James was struggling furiously to
+find words suitable to their tender years, they bade him a polite good
+night, and left the room.
+
+Their departure was a relief; Sir James rose hastily to his feet and
+expressed his feelings without difficulty.  Then he began to laugh.  It
+was rather on the wrong side of his face; and the knowledge that he had
+been worsted in his own smoking-room, and that by two children,
+rankled.  He was not used to being worsted, even in the heart of
+Africa, by much more ferocious creatures.  But after sleeping on the
+matter, he perceived yet more clearly that they had him, as he phrased
+it, in a cleft stick; and he told his head-keeper that the Dangerfield
+children were allowed to fish his water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+AND AN APOLOGY
+
+The vindication of their dignity filled the Twins with a cold undated
+triumph; but they enjoyed the liveliest satisfaction in being able to
+fish in well-stocked water, because the trout tempted their mother's
+faint appetite.
+
+She had grown stronger during the summer.  She was not, indeed,
+definitely ill; she was not even definitely weak.  But, a woman of
+spirit and intelligence, she was suffering from the wearisome emptiness
+of her life in the country.  It was sapping her strength and energy; in
+it she would grow old long before her time.  The Twins had been used to
+find her livelier and more spirited, keenly interested in their doings;
+and the change troubled them.  Doctor Arbuthnot prescribed a tonic for
+her; and now and again, as in the matter of the peaches and now of the
+trout, they set themselves to procure some delicacy for her.  But she
+made no real improvement; and the empty country life was poisoning the
+springs of her being.
+
+Sir James had expected to be annoyed frequently by the sight and sound
+of the Twins on the bank of the stream.  To his pleased surprise he
+neither saw nor heard them.  For the most part they fished in the early
+morning and brought their catch home to tempt their mother's appetite
+at breakfast.  But if they did fish in the evening, one or the other
+acted as scout, watching Sir James' movements; and they kept out of his
+sight.  They had gained their end; and their natural delicacy assured
+them that the sight of them could not be pleasant to Sir James.  As the
+Terror phrased it:
+
+"He must be pretty sick at getting a lesson; and there's no point in
+rubbing it in."
+
+Then one evening (by no fault of theirs) he came upon them.  Erebus was
+playing a big trout; and she had no thought of abandoning it to spare
+Sir James' feelings.  Besides, if she had had such a thought, it was
+impracticable, since Mrs. Dangerfield had come with them.
+
+He watched Erebus play her fish for two or three minutes; then it
+snapped the gut and was gone.
+
+"Evidently you're no so good at fishing as blackmailing," said Sir
+James in a nasty carping tone, for the fact that they had worsted him
+still rankled in his heart.
+
+"I catch more fish than you do, anyhow!" said Erebus with some heat;
+and she cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder.
+
+Sir James turned to see what she had glanced at and found himself
+looking into the deep brown eyes of a very pretty woman.
+
+[Illustration: Sir James turned and found himself looking into the deep
+brown eyes of a very pretty woman.]
+
+He had not seen her when he had come out of the bushes on to the scene
+of the struggle; he had been too deeply interested in it to remove his
+eyes from it; and she had watched it from behind him.
+
+"This is Sir James Morgan, mother," said the Terror quickly.
+
+Sir James raised his cap; Mrs. Dangerfield bowed, and said gratefully:
+"It was very good of you to give my children leave to fish."
+
+"Oh--ah--yes--n-n-not at all," stammered Sir James, blushing faintly.
+
+He was unused to women and found her presence confusing.
+
+"Oh, but it was," said Mrs. Dangerfield.  "And I'm seeing that they
+don't take an unfair advantage of your kindness, for they told me that,
+thanks to Mr. Glazebrook's netting his part of it, there are none too
+many fish in the stream."
+
+"It's very good of you.  B-b-but I don't mind how many they catch,"
+said Sir James.
+
+He shuffled his feet and gazed rather wildly round him, for he wished
+to remove himself swiftly from her disturbing presence.  Yet he did not
+wish to; he found her voice as charming as her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield laughed gently, and said: "You would, if I let them
+catch as many as they'd like to."
+
+"Are they as good fishermen as that?" said Sir James.
+
+"Well, they've been fishing ever since they could handle a rod.  They
+are supposed to empty the free water by Little Deeping Village every
+spring.  So I limit them to three fish a day," said Mrs. Dangerfield;
+and there was a ring of motherly pride in her voice which pleased him.
+
+"It's very good of you," said Sir James.  He hesitated, shuffled his
+feet again, took a step to go; then looking rather earnestly at Mrs.
+Dangerfield, he added in a rather uncertain voice: "I should like to
+stay and see how they do it.  I might pick up a wrinkle or two."
+
+"Of course.  Why, it's your stream," she said.
+
+He stayed, but he paid far more attention to Mrs. Dangerfield than to
+the fishing.  Besides her charming eyes and delightful voice, her air
+of fragility made a strong appeal to his vigorous robustness.  His
+first discomfort sternly vanquished, its place was taken by the keenest
+desire to remain in her presence.  He not only stayed with them till
+the Twins had caught their three fish, but he walked nearly to Colet
+House with them, and at last bade them good-by with an air of the
+deepest reluctance.  It can hardly be doubted that he had been smitten
+by an emotional lightning-stroke, as the French put it, or, as we more
+gently phrase it, that he had fallen in love at first sight.
+
+As he walked back to the Grange he was regretting that he had not
+received the social advances of his neighbors with greater warmth.  If,
+instead of staying firmly at home, he had been moving about among them,
+he would have met Mrs. Dangerfield earlier and by now be in a fortunate
+condition of meeting her often.  It did not for a moment enter his mind
+that if he had met her stiffly in a drawing-room he might easily have
+failed to fall in love with her at all.  He cudgeled his brains to find
+some way of meeting her again and meeting her often.  He was to meet
+her quite soon without any effort on his part.
+
+It is possible that Mrs. Dangerfield had observed that Sir James had
+been smitten by that emotional _coup de foudre_, for she was walking
+with a much brisker step and there was a warmer color in her cheeks.
+
+After he had bidden them good-by and had turned back to the Grange, she
+said in a really cheerful tone:
+
+"I expect Sir James finds it rather dull at the Grange after the
+exciting life he had in Africa."
+
+"Rather!", said the Twins with one quickly assenting voice.
+
+She had not missed Sir James' sentence about the superiority of Erebus'
+blackmailing to her fishing.  But she knew the Twins far too well to
+ask them for an explanation of it before him.  None the less it clung
+to her mind.
+
+At supper therefore she said: "What did Sir James mean by calling you a
+blackmailer, Erebus?"
+
+The Terror knew from her tone that she was resolved to have the
+explanation; and he said suavely:
+
+"Oh, it was about the fishing."
+
+"How--about the fishing?" said Mrs. Dangerfield quickly.
+
+"Well, he didn't want to give us leave.  In fact he never answered our
+letter asking for it," said the Terror.
+
+"And of course we couldn't stand that; and we had to make him," said
+Erebus sternly.
+
+"Make him?  How did you make him?" said Mrs. Dangerfield.
+
+The Terror told her.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield looked surprised and annoyed, but much less surprised
+and annoyed than the ordinary mother would have looked on learning that
+her offspring had blackmailed a complete stranger.  She felt chiefly
+annoyed by the fact that the complete stranger they had chosen to
+blackmail should be Sir James.
+
+"Then you did blackmail him," she said in a tone of dismay.
+
+"He seemed to think that we were--like the Douglases used to," said the
+Terror in an amiable tone.
+
+"But surely you knew that blackmailing is very wrong--very wrong,
+indeed," said Mrs. Dangerfield.
+
+"Well, he _did_ seem to think so," said the Terror.  "But we thought he
+was prejudiced; and we didn't take much notice of him."
+
+"And we couldn't possibly let him take no notice of our letter, Mum--it
+was such a polite letter--and not take it out of him," said Erebus.
+
+"And it hasn't done any harm, you know.  We wanted those trout ever so
+much more than he did," said the Terror.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield said nothing for a while; and her frown deepened as
+she pondered how to deal with the affair.  She was still chiefly
+annoyed that Sir James should have been the victim.  The Twins gazed at
+her with a sympathetic gravity which by no means meant that they were
+burdened by a sense of wrong-doing.  They were merely sorry that she
+was annoyed.
+
+"Well, there's nothing for it: you'll have to apologize to Sir
+James--both of you," she said at last.
+
+"Apologize to him!  But he never answered our letter!" cried Erebus.
+
+The Terror hesitated a moment, opened his mouth to speak, shut it,
+opened it again and said in a soothing tone: "All right, Mum; we'll
+apologize."
+
+"I'll take you to the Grange to-morrow afternoon to do it," said Mrs.
+Dangerfield, for she thought that unless she were present the Twins
+would surely contrive to repeat the offense in the apology and compel
+Sir James to invite them to continue to fish.
+
+There had been some such intention in the Terror's mind, for his face
+fell: an apology in the presence of his mother would have to be a real
+apology.  But he said amiably: "All right; just as you like, Mum."
+
+Erebus scowled very darkly, and muttered fierce things under her
+breath.  After supper, without moving him at all, she reproached the
+Terror bitterly for not refusing firmly.
+
+The next afternoon therefore the three of them walked, by a foot-path
+across the fields, to the Grange.  Surprise and extreme pleasure were
+mingled with the respect with which Mawley ushered them into the
+drawing-room; and he almost ran to apprise Sir James of their coming.
+
+Sir James was at the moment wondering very anxiously whether he would
+find Mrs. Dangerfield on the bank of the stream that evening watching
+her children fish.  His night's rest had trebled his interest in her
+and his desire to see more, a great deal more, of her.  The appeal to
+him of her frail and delicate beauty was stronger than ever.
+
+At dinner the night before he had questioned Mawley, with a careless
+enough air, about her, and had learned that Mr. Dangerfield had been
+dead seven years, that she had a very small income, and was hard put to
+it to make both ends meet.  His compassion had been deeply stirred; she
+was so plainly a creature who deserved the smoothest path in life.  He
+wished that he could now, at once, see his way to help her to that
+smoothest path; and he was resolved to find that way as soon as he
+possibly could.
+
+When Mawley told him that she was in his drawing-room, he could
+scarcely believe his joyful ears.  He had to put a constraint on
+himself to walk to its door in a decorous fashion fit for Mawley's
+eyes, and not dash to it at full speed.  He entered the room with his
+eyes shining very brightly.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield greeted him coldly, even a little haughtily.  She was
+looking grave and ill at ease.
+
+"I've come about a rather unpleasant matter, Sir James," she said as
+they shook hands.  "I find that these children have been blackmailing
+you; and I've brought them to apologize.  I--I'm exceedingly distressed
+about it."
+
+"Oh, there's no need to be--no need at all.  It was rather a joke," Sir
+James protested quickly.
+
+"But blackmailing isn't a joke--though of course they didn't realize
+what a serious thing it is--"
+
+"It was the Douglases doing it," broke in the Terror in an explanatory
+tone.
+
+"I don't think you ought to have given way to them, Sir James," said
+Mrs. Dangerfield severely.
+
+"But I hadn't any choice, I assure you.  They had me in a cleft stick,"
+protested Sir James.
+
+"Well then you ought to have come straight to me," said Mrs.
+Dangerfield.
+
+"Oh, but really--a little fishing--what is a little fishing?  I
+couldn't come bothering you about a thing like that," protested Sir
+James.
+
+"But it isn't a little thing if you get it like that," said Mrs.
+Dangerfield.  "Anyhow, it's going to stop; and they're going to
+apologize."
+
+She turned to them; and as if at a signal the Twins said with one voice:
+
+"I apologize for blackmailing you, Sir James."
+
+The Terror spoke with an amiable nonchalance; the words came very
+stiffly from the lips of Erebus, and she wore a lowering air.
+
+"Oh, not at all--not at all--don't mention it.  Besides, I owe you an
+apology for not answering your letter," said Sir James in all the
+discomfort of a man receiving something that is not his due.  Then he
+heaved a sigh of relief and added: "Well, that's all right.  And now I
+hope you'll do all the fishing you want to."
+
+"Certainly not; I can't allow them to fish your water any more," said
+Mrs. Dangerfield sternly.
+
+"Oh, but really," said Sir James with a harried air.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Dangerfield; and she held out her hand.
+
+"But you'll have some tea--after that hot walk!" cried Sir James.
+
+"No, thank you, I must be getting home," said Mrs. Dangerfield firmly.
+
+Sir James did not press her to stay; he saw that her mind was made up.
+
+He opened the door of the drawing-room, and they filed out.  As Erebus
+passed out, she turned and made a hideous grimace at him.  She was
+desirous that he should not overrate her apology.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AND THE SOUND OF WEDDING BELLS
+
+Sir James came through the hall with them, carelessly taking his cap
+from the horn of an antelope on the wall as he passed it.  He came down
+the steps, along the gardens to the side gate, and through it into the
+park, talking to Mrs. Dangerfield of the changes he had found in the
+gardens of the Grange after his last five years of big game shooting
+about the world.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield had not liked her errand; and she was in no mood for
+companionship.  But she could not drive him from her side on his own
+land.  They walked slowly; the Twins forged ahead.  When Sir James and
+Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the park, the Twins were out of sight.
+Mere politeness demanded that he should walk the rest of the way with
+her.
+
+When the Twins were out of the hearing of their mother and Sir James,
+the Terror said:
+
+"Well, he was quite decent about it.  It made him much more
+uncomfortable than we were.  I suppose it was because we're more used
+to Mum."
+
+"What did the silly idiot want to give us away at all for?" said the
+unappeased Erebus.
+
+"Oh, well; he didn't mean to.  It was an accident, you know," said the
+Terror.
+
+His provident mind foresaw advantages to be attained from a closer
+intimacy with Sir James.
+
+"Accident!  People shouldn't have accidents like that!" said Erebus in
+a tone of bitter scorn.
+
+When he and Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the park, Sir James
+diplomatically fell to lauding the Twins to the skies, their beauty,
+their grace and their intelligence.  The diplomacy was not natural (he
+was no diplomat) but accidental: the Twins were the only subject he
+could at the moment think of.  He could not have found a quicker way to
+Mrs. Dangerfield's approval.  She had been disposed to dislike him for
+having been blackmailed by them; his praise of them softened her heart.
+Discussing them, they came right to the gate of Colet House; and it was
+only natural that she should invite him to tea.  He accepted with
+alacrity.  At tea he changed the subject: they talked about her.
+
+He came home yet more interested in her, resolved yet more firmly to
+see more of her.  With a natural simplicity he used his skill in
+woodcraft to compass his end, and availed himself of the covert
+afforded by the common to watch Colet House.  Thanks to this simple
+device he was able to meet or overtake Mrs. Dangerfield, somewhere in
+the first half-mile of her afternoon walk.
+
+They grew intimate quickly, thanks chiefly to his simple directness;
+and he found that his first impression that he wanted her more than he
+had ever wanted anything in his life, more even than he had wanted, in
+his enthusiastic youth, to shoot a black rhinoceros, was right.  He had
+been making arrangements for another shooting expedition; but he
+perceived now very clearly, indeed, that it was his immediate duty to
+settle down in life, provide the Hall with a mistress, and do his duty
+by his estate and his neighbors.
+
+He had had no experience of women; but his hunting had developed his
+instinct and he perceived that he must proceed very warily indeed, that
+to bring Mrs. Dangerfield over the boundary-line of friendship into the
+land of romance was the most difficult enterprise he had ever dreamed
+of.  But he had a stout heart, the hunter's pertinacity, and a burning
+resolve to succeed.
+
+He wanted all the help he could get; and he saw that the Twins would be
+useful friends in the matter.  But did they chance on him walking with
+their mother, or at tea with her, they held politely but gloomily
+aloof.  He must abate their hostility.
+
+He contrived, therefore, to meet them on the common as they were
+starting one afternoon on an expedition, greeted them cheerfully,
+stopped and said: "I'm awfully sorry I gave you away the other day.
+But I never saw your mother till I'd done it."
+
+"Don't mention it," said the Terror with cold graciousness.
+
+"So you ought to be," said Erebus.
+
+"It's a pity you should lose your fishing.  If I'd known how good you
+both were at it, I should have given you leave when I got your letter,"
+said Sir James hypocritically.  "But I was misinformed about you."
+
+"It's worse that mother should lose the trout.  She does hate butcher's
+meat so, and it is so difficult to get her to eat properly," said
+Erebus in a somewhat mollified tone.
+
+"It's like that, is it?" said Sir James quickly; and an expression of
+deep concern filled his face.
+
+"Yes, and she did eat those trout," said Erebus plaintively.
+
+Sir James knitted his brow in frowning thought; and the Twins watched
+him with little hope in their faces.  Of a sudden his brow grew smooth;
+and he said:
+
+"Look here: you mayn't fish my water; but there's no reason why you
+shouldn't fish Glazebrook's.  _I_ think that a man who nets his water
+loses all rights."
+
+"Yes, he does," said the Terror firmly.
+
+"Well, with one watching while the other fishes, it ought to be safe
+enough; and I'll stand the racket if you get prosecuted and fined.  I
+want to take it out of that fellow Glazebrook--he's not a sportsman."
+
+The Terror's face had brightened; but he said: "But how should we
+account for the fish we took home?"
+
+"You can reckon them presents from me.  They would be--practically--if
+I'm going to pay the fines," said Sir James.
+
+The eyes of both the Twins danced: this was a fashion of dealing
+tenderly with exactitude which appealed to them.  The Terror himself
+could not have been more tender with it.
+
+"That's a ripping idea!" said Erebus in a tone of the warmest approval.
+
+The peace was thus concluded.
+
+Having thus abated their hostility, Sir James spared no pains to win
+their good will.  He gave the Terror a rook-rifle and Erebus boxes of
+chocolate.  If he chanced on them when motoring in the afternoon he
+would carry them off, bicycles and all, in his car and regale them with
+sumptuous teas at the Grange; and at Colet House he entertained them
+with stories of the African forest which thrilled Mrs. Dangerfield even
+more than they thrilled them.  But he won their hearts most by his
+sympathy with them in the matter of their mother's appetite, and by
+joining them in little plots to obtain delicacies for her.
+
+Having discovered how grateful it was to her, he lost no opportunity of
+taking the short cut to her heart by praising them.  He laid himself
+out to be useful to her, to entertain and amuse her, trying to make for
+himself as large as possible a place in her life.  She was not long
+discovering that he was in love with her; and the discovery came as a
+very pleasant shock.  None of the neighbors, much less Captain Baster,
+who, during her stay at Colet House, had asked her to marry them, had
+attracted her so strongly as did Sir James.  Even as her delicacy made
+the strongest appeal to his vigorous robustness, so his vigorous
+robustness made the strongest appeal to her delicacy.
+
+But Little Deeping is a censorious place; and its gossips are the
+keener for having so few chances of plying their active tongues.  When
+no less than four ladies had on four several occasions met Sir James
+and Mrs. Dangerfield walking together along the lanes, those tongues
+began to wag.
+
+Then old Mrs. Blenkinsop, the childless widow of a Common Councilman of
+London, one morning met the Twins in the village.  They greeted her
+politely and made to escape.  But she was in the mood, her most
+constant mood, to babble.  She stopped them, and with a knowing air,
+and even more offensive smile, said:
+
+"So, young people, we're going to hear the sound of wedding bells very
+soon in Little Deeping, are we?"
+
+Erebus merely scowled at her, for more than once she had talked about
+them; but the Terror, in a tone of somewhat perfunctory politeness,
+said:
+
+"Are we?"
+
+"I should have thought you would have known all about it," she said
+with a cackling little giggle.  "Mind you tell me as soon as you're
+told: I want to be one of the first to congratulate your dear mother."
+
+"What do you mean?" snapped the Terror with a disconcerting suddenness;
+and his eyes shone very bright and threatening in a steady glare into
+her own.
+
+"Oh, nothing--nothing!" cried Mrs. Blenkinsop, flustered by his
+sternness.  "Only seeing Sir James so much with your mother--But
+there--there's probably nothing in it--the Morgans always were
+rovers--one foot at sea and one on shore--I dare say he'll be in the
+middle of Africa before the week is out.  Good morning--good morning."
+
+With that she sprang, more lightly than she had sprung for years, into
+the grocer's shop.
+
+The Twins looked after her with uneasy eyes, frowning.  Then Erebus
+said: "Silly old idiot!"
+
+The Terror said nothing; he walked on frowning.  At last he broke out:
+"This won't do!  We can't have these old idiots gossiping about Mum.
+And it's a beastly nuisance: Sir James was making things so much more
+cheerful for her."
+
+"But you don't think there's anything in what the old cat said?  It
+would be perfectly horrid to have a stepfather!" cried Erebus in a
+panic.
+
+The Terror walked on, frowning in deep thought.
+
+"_Do_ you think there's anything in it?" cried Erebus.
+
+"I dare say there is.  Sir James is always about with Mum; and he's
+always very civil to us--people aren't generally," said the Terror.
+
+"Oh, but we must stop it!  We must stop it at once!" cried Erebus.
+
+"Why must we?"
+
+"It would be perfectly beastly having a step-father, I tell you!" cried
+Erebus fiercely.
+
+"It isn't altogether what we like--there's Mum," said the Terror.  "She
+does have a rotten time of it--always being hard up and never going
+anywhere.  And, after all, we shouldn't mind Sir James when we got used
+to him."
+
+"But we should!  And look how we stopped the Cruncher!"
+
+"Sir James isn't like the Cruncher--at all," said the Terror.
+
+"All stepfathers are alike; and they're beastly!" cried Erebus.
+
+"Now, it's no good your getting yourself obstinate about it," said the
+Terror firmly.  "That won't be of any use at all, if they've made up
+their minds.  But what's bothering me is what that old cat meant by
+saying that the Morgans were rovers."
+
+Erebus' frown deepened as she knitted her brow over the cryptic
+utterance of Mrs. Blenkinsop.  Then she said in a tone of considerable
+relief:
+
+"She must have meant that he wasn't really in earnest about marrying
+Mum."
+
+"Yes, that's what she did mean," growled the Terror.  "And she'll go
+about telling everybody that he's only fooling."
+
+"But I don't think he is.  I don't think he would," said Erebus quickly.
+
+"No more do I," said the Terror.
+
+They walked nearly fifty yards in silence.  Then the Terror's face
+cleared and brightened; and he said cheerfully:
+
+"I know the thing to do!  I'll go and ask him his intentions.  That's
+what people said old Hawley ought to have done when the Cut--you know:
+that fellow from Rowington--was fooling about with Miss Hawley."
+
+"All right, we'll go and ask him," said Erebus with equal cheerfulness.
+
+"No, no, you can't go.  I must go alone," said the Terror quickly.
+"It's the kind of thing the men of the family always do--people said so
+about Miss Hawley--and I'm the only man of the family about.  If Uncle
+Maurice were in London and not in Vienna, we might send for him to do
+it."
+
+Erebus burst into bitter complaint.  She alleged that the restrictions
+which were applied to the ordinary girl should by no means be applied
+to her, since she was not ordinary; that since they cooperated in
+everything else they ought to cooperate in this; that he was much more
+successful in those exploits in which they did cooperate, than in those
+which he performed alone.
+
+"It's no good talking like that: it isn't the thing to do," said the
+Terror with very cold severity.  "You know what Mrs. Morton said about
+Miss Hawley and the Cut--that the men of the family did it."
+
+"You're only a boy; and I'm as old as you!" snapped Erebus.
+
+"Well, when there isn't a man to do a thing, a boy does it.  So it's no
+use you're making a fuss," said the Terror in a tone of finality.
+
+Erebus protested that the upshot of his going alone would be that Sir
+James would presently be their detested stepfather; but he went alone,
+early in the afternoon.
+
+He was now on such familiar terms at the Grange that Mawley took him
+straight to the smoking-room, where his master was smoking a cigar over
+his after-lunch coffee.  Sir James welcomed him warmly, for he was
+beginning to learn that the Terror was quite good company, in the
+country, and poured him out a cup of coffee.
+
+The Terror put sugar and cream into it and forthwith, since a simple
+matter of this kind did not seem to him to call for the exercise of his
+usual diplomacy, said with firm directness: "I've come to ask your
+intentions, sir."
+
+"My intentions?" said Sir James, not taking him.
+
+"Yes.  You see some of the old cats who live about here are saying that
+you're only fooling," said the Terror.
+
+"The deuce they are!" cried Sir James sharply with a sudden and angry
+comprehension.
+
+"Yes.  So of course the thing to do was to ask your intentions," said
+the Terror firmly.
+
+"Of course--of course," said Sir James.
+
+He looked at the Terror; and in spite of his anger his eyes twinkled.
+Then he added gravely: "My intentions are not only extremely serious
+but they're extremely immediate.  I'd marry your mother to-morrow if
+she'd let me."
+
+"That's all right," said the Terror with a faint sigh of relief.  "Of
+course I knew you were all right.  Only, it was the thing to do, with
+these silly old idiots talking."
+
+"Quite so--quite so," said Sir James.
+
+There was a pause; and Sir James looked again at the Terror tranquilly
+drinking his coffee, in a somewhat appealing fashion, for he had been
+suffering badly from all the doubts and fears of the lover; and the
+Terror's serenity was soothing.
+
+Then with a sudden craving for comfort and reassurance, he said: "Do
+you think your mother would marry me?"
+
+"I haven't the slightest idea; women are so funny," said the Terror
+with a sage air.
+
+Sir James pulled at his mustache.  Then the compulsion to have some
+one's opinion of his chances, even if it was only a small boy's, came
+on him strongly; and he said:
+
+"I wish I knew what to do.  As it is we're very good friends; and if I
+asked her to marry me, I might spoil that."
+
+The Terror considered the point for a minute or two; then he said: "I
+don't think you would.  Mum's very sensible, though she is so pretty."
+
+Sir James frowned deeply in his utter perplexity; then he said: "I'll
+risk it!"
+
+He rang the bell and ordered his car.  He talked to the Terror jerkily
+and somewhat incoherently till it came; and the Terror observed his
+perturbation with considerable interest.  It seemed to him very curious
+in a hard-bitten hunter of big game.  They started and in the two level
+miles to Little Deeping Sir James changed his car's speeds nine times.
+
+As they came very slowly up to Colet House, the Terror said with an air
+of detachment: "I should think, you know, Mum could be rushed."
+
+He had definitely made up his mind that it would be a good thing for
+her.
+
+"If I only could!" said Sir James in a tone of feverish doubt.
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield was mending a rent in a frock of Erebus when he
+entered the drawing-room; and at the first glance she knew, with a
+thrill half of pleasure, half of apprehension, why he had come.
+
+At the sight of her Sir James felt his tremulous courage oozing out of
+him; but with what was left of it he blurted out desperately:
+
+"Look here, Anne, dear, I want you to marry me!"
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Dangerfield, rising quickly.
+
+"Yes, I want it more than ever I wanted anything in my life!"
+
+Mrs. Dangerfield's face was one flush; and she cried: "B-b-but it's out
+of the question.  I--I'm old enough to be your mother!"
+
+"Now how?--I'm three years and seven months older than you," said Sir
+James, taken aback.
+
+"I shall be an old woman while you're still quite young!" she protested.
+
+"You won't ever be old!  You're not the kind!" cried Sir James with
+some heat; and then with sudden understanding: "If that's your only
+reason, why, that settles it!"
+
+With that he picked her up and kissed her four times.
+
+When he set her down and held her at arm's length, gazing at her with
+devouring eyes, she gasped somewhat faintly: "Oh, James, you are--ever
+so much more--impetuous--than I thought.  You gave me--no time."
+
+"Thank goodness, I took the Terror's tip!" said Sir James.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Terrible Twins, by Edgar Jepson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TERRIBLE TWINS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19043.txt or 19043.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/0/4/19043/
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.