The Terrible Twins | Page 5

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