The Terrible Twins

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They are," said Erebus in a grateful tone--"worth all the trouble we had with that dog."

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

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

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