



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
