The Terrible Twins | Page 3

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