The Terrible Twins | Page 2

(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