The Terrible Twins Part 7

"I never make blots! It's you that makes blots!" cried Erebus, ruffled. "Mr. Etheridge says I write ever so much better than you do.

Ever so much better."

"That's why you're writing the letter and not me," said the Terror coldly. "Fire away: 'My dear Aunt Amelia'--I say, Wiggins, what's the proper words for 'awfully keen'?"

"'Keen' is 'interested'--I don't know how many 'r's' there are in 'interested'--and 'awfully' is an awfully difficult word," said Wiggins, pondering.

The Terror looked up "interested" in the dictionary with a laborious painfulness, and announced triumphantly that there was but a single "r"

in it; then he said, "What's the right word for 'awfully,' Wiggins?

Buck up!"

"'Tremendously,'" said Wiggins with the air of a successful Columbus.

"That's it," said the Terror. "'My dear Aunt Amelia: I have often heard that you are tremendously interested in cats' homes'"--

"I should think you had!" said Erebus.

"Now don't jabber, please; just stick to the writing," said the Terror.

"I've got to make this letter a corker; and how can I think if you jabber?"

Erebus made a hideous grimace and bent to her task.

"'Little Deeping wants a cats' home awfully'--no: 'tremendously.' I like that word 'tremendously'; it means something," said the Terror.

"You're jabbering yourself now," said Erebus unpleasantly.

Ruffling his fair hair in the agony of composition, the Terror continued: "'The quant.i.ty of kittens that are drowned is horrible'--that ought to fetch her; kittens are so much nicer than cats--'and I have been thinking'--Oughtn't you to put in some stops?"

"I'm putting in stops--lots," said Erebus contemptuously.

"'I have been thinking--that if you wanted to have a cats' home here'--What's the right word for 'running a thing,' Wiggins?"

Wiggins frowned deeply; a number of his freckles seemed to run into one another.

"There is a word 'overseer'--slaves have them," he said cautiously.

The Terror sought that word painfully in the dictionary, spelled it out, and continued: "'I could overseer it for you. I have got my eye on a building which would suit us tremendously well. But these things cost money, and it would not be any use starting with less than thirty pounds'--

"Thirty pounds! My goodness!" cried Erebus; and her eyes opened wide.

"We may as well go the whole hog," said the Terror philosophically.

"Go on: 'Or else just as the cats get to be happy and feel it was a real home--' What's the word for 'bust up,' Wiggins?"

"Burst up," said Wiggins without hesitation.

"No, no; not the grammar--the right word! Oh, I know; 'go bankrupt'--'it might go bankrupt. So it you would like to have a cats'

home here and send me some money, I will start it at once. Your affectionate nephew, Hyacinth Wolfram Dangerfield.' There!" said the Terror with a sigh of relief.

"But you've left me out altogether," said Erebus in a suddenly aggrieved tone.

"I should jolly well think I had! You know that ever since you stayed with Aunt Amelia, and taught her parrot to say 'Dam,' she won't have anything to do with you," said the Terror firmly.

"There's no pleasing some people," said Erebus mournfully. "When I went there the silly old parrot couldn't say a thing; and when I came away, he could say 'Dam! Dam! Dam!' from morning till night without making a mistake."

"It's a word people don't like," said the Terror.

"Well, I and the parrot meant a dam in a river. I told Aunt Amelia so," said Erebus firmly.

"She might not believe you; she doesn't know how truthfully we've been brought up," said the Terror. "Go on; sign my name to the letter."

"That's forgery. You ought to sign your name yourself," said Erebus.

"No; you write my name better than I do; and it will go better with the rest of the letter. Sign away," said the Terror firmly.

Erebus signed away, and then she said: "But what good's the money going to be to us, if we've got to spend it on a silly old cats' home? It only means a lot of trouble."

The guilelessness deepened and deepened on the Terror's face. "Well, you see, there aren't many cats in Little Deeping--not enough to fill a cats' home decently," he said slowly. "We should have to have bicycles to collect them--from Great Deeping, and Muttle Deeping, and farther off."

Erebus gasped; and the light of understanding illumined her charming face, as she cried in a tone of awe not untinctured with admiration: "Well, you do think of things!"

"I have to," said the Terror. "If I didn't we should never have a single thing."

The Terror procured a stamp from Mrs. Dangerfield. He did not tell her of the splendid scheme he was promoting; he only said that he had thought he would write to Aunt Amelia. Mrs. Dangerfield was pleased with him for his thought: she wished him to stand well with his great-aunt, since she was a rich woman without children of her own.

She did not, indeed, suggest that the letter should be shown to her, though she suspected that it contained some artless request. She thought it better that the Terror should write to his great-aunt to make requests rather than not write at all.

The letter posted, the Twins resumed the somewhat jerky tenor of their lives. Erebus was full of speculations about the changes in their lives those bicycles would bring about; she would pause in the very middle of some important enterprise to discuss the rides they would take on them, the orchards that those machines would bring within their reach. But the Terror would have none of it; his calm philosophic mind forbade him to discuss his chickens before they were hatched.

Since her philanthropy was confined entirely to cats, it is not remarkable that philanthropy, and not intelligence, was the chief characteristic of Lady Ryehampton. As the purport of her great-nephew's letter slowly penetrated her mind, a broad and beaming smile of gratification spread slowly over her large round face; and as she handed the letter to Miss Hendersyde, her companion, she cried in unctuous tones: "The dear boy! So young, but already enthusiastic about great things!"

Miss Hendersyde looked at her employer patiently; she foresaw that she was going to have to struggle with her to save her from being once more victimized. She had come to suspect anything that stirred Lady Ryehampton to a n.o.ble phrase. Her eyes brightened with humorous appreciation as she read the letter of Erebus; and when she came to the end of it she opened her mouth to point out that Little Deeping was one of the last places in England to need a cats' home. Then she bethought herself of the whole situation, shut her mouth with a little click, and her face went blank.

Then she breathed a short silent prayer for forgiveness, smiled and said warmly: "It's really wonderful. You must have inspired him with that enthusiasm yourself."

"I suppose I must," said Lady Ryehampton with an air of satisfaction.

"And I must be careful not to discourage him."

Miss Hendersyde thought of the Terror's face, his charming sympathetic manners, and his darned knickerbockers. It was only right that some of Lady Ryehampton's money should go to him; indeed that money ought to be educating him at a good school. It was monstrous that the great bulk of it should be spent on cats; cats were all very well but human beings came first. And the Terror was such an attractive human being.

"Yes, it is a dreadful thing to discourage enthusiasm," she said gravely.

Lady Ryehampton proceeded to discuss the question whether a cats' home could be properly started with thirty pounds, whether she had not better send fifty. Miss Hendersyde made her conscience quite comfortable by compromising: she said that she thought thirty was enough to begin with; that if more were needful, Lady Ryehampton could give it later. Lady Ryehampton accepted the suggestion.

Having set her employer's hand to the plow, Miss Hendersyde saw to it that she did not draw it back. Lady Ryehampton would spend money on cats, but she could not be hurried in the spending of it. But Miss Hendersyde kept referring to the Terror's enterprise all that day and the next morning, with the result that on the next afternoon Lady Ryehampton signed the check for thirty pounds. At Miss Hendersyde's suggestion she drew the money in cash; and Miss Hendersyde turned it into postal orders, for there is no bank at Little Deeping.

On the third morning the registered letter reached Colet House. The excited Erebus, who had been watching for the postman, received it from him, signed the receipt with trembling fingers, and dashed off with the precious packet to the Terror in the orchard.

The Terror took it from her with flawless serenity and opened it slowly.

But as he counted the postal orders, a faint flush covered his face; and he said in a somewhat breathless tone: "Thirty pounds--well!"