"And I will love thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry."

"Man," he said, "that's fine! That's poetry. That's the real thing!"

I had agreed. It is no use arguing with a Scot about Burns. (I remember once being nearly dirked at a Caledonian Dinner because I ventured to remark that "before ye" was not in my opinion a good rhyme to "Loch Lomond.")

However, Kitty and I were unable to decide whether Robin's "bonnie lass"

on that occasion had been a personality or an abstraction.

"Mightn't it be one of the Twins?" I remarked.

"Well, it _might_ be," admitted Kitty judicially, "but he has kept it very close if it is. No," she continued more decidedly, "I don't think it can be. They are quite out of his line. Besides--it would be too absurd!"

It was not one Twin at any rate, for a fortnight later Dilly sprung upon us the third surprise of the series I have mentioned. She announced that she had decided to marry Dicky Lever.

There was, I suppose, nothing very surprising in that. Dicky had been in constant attendance upon the Twins for nearly two years, and had long since graduated into the ranks of the Good Sorts. The surprise to us--rather unreasonably, perhaps--lay in the fact of--

1. Dicky having definitely fixed upon a particular Twin to propose to;

2. That Twin having definitely selected Dicky out of the assortment at her command.

I was so accustomed to seeing my sisters-in-law compassed about by a cloud of young men who appeared to admire them both equally, and to whom they appeared to apportion their favours with indiscriminate _camaraderie_, that the idea of one admirer stealing a march on all the others seemed a little unfair, somehow.

As Dolly remarked, it would break up the firm horribly.

"You see," she confided to me rather plaintively, "Dilly will have no use for them now, and they'll have still less use for her--an engaged girl beside other girls is about as exciting as a tapioca-pudding at a Lord Mayor's Banquet--and they will only have me. That won't be half the fun."

"I should have thought that your fun would have been exactly doubled," I said.

"Not a bit. How like a man! Don't you see, the fun used to be in playing them backwards and forwards between our two selves--like ping-pong, you know! It was clinking!"

She sighed regretfully.

"Now I shall either have to avoid men or marry them," she concluded, vaguely but regretfully. "Before, if they got in the way, I could always volley them back to Dilly. Now--one _can't_ play ping-pong all by oneself!"

III.

Dilly's engagement, as is usual under such circumstances, afforded my household many opportunities for airy badinage and innocent merriment.

Dolly always heralded her coming into the billiard-room, where the affianced pair had staked out a claim, by a cough of penetrating severity, and usually entered the room with her features obscured by an open umbrella. On several occasions, too, she impersonated her sister; and once, when Dicky was spending a week-end in the house, was only prevented by the fraction of a second from robbing that incensed damosel of her morning salute.

My share in the proceedings was limited to a single constrained interview with Dicky, at which, feeling extremely rude and inquisitive, I asked him the usual stereotyped questions about his income, prospects, and habits (most of which I knew only too well already), which, being satisfactorily answered, I rang the bell for the Tantalus, and thanked heaven that the Twins were not Triplets. I had indeed suggested that Dilly's nearest and most natural protector was her brother, Master Gerald, and that Dicky should apply not for my consent but his. This motion, however, was negatived without a division. I was sorry, for I think my brother-in-law would have shown himself worthy of the occasion.

My wife received the news of the engagement with all the enthusiasm usually exhibited by a Salvation lassie when a fresh convert is hustled forward to the "saved" bench, and henceforth divided her time between ordering Dilly's trousseau and giving tea-parties, at which the prospective bridegroom was produced and passed round, "as if," to use his own expression, "he were the newest thing in accordion-pleating."

As regards Robin's share in the event, I can only recall one incident.

He had been away at Stoneleigh, the largest town in my constituency, on some party business, and when he returned home the engagement had been announced for nearly a week.

"I must go and offer my good wishes to Miss Dilly," he said, after hearing the news. "Do you know where she is, Mrs Inglethwaite?"

"I saw her upstairs a few minutes ago," said Kitty. "Come up, and we'll find her."

We were in the library at the time, and Kitty and Robin left the room together. The rest of the story my wife told me later.

"We went up," she said, "and looked into the drawing-room, where I had last seen Dilly. The room was nearly dark, but she was there, sitting curled up in front of the fire.

"'There she is,' I said. 'Go and say something nice.'

"Well, dear,"--Kitty's face assumed an air of impressive solemnity which makes her absurdly like her daughter--"he stood hesitating a moment, and then walked straight up to her and said--

"'Good afternoon! Can you tell me where your sister is? I want to offer her my good wishes on the great event.'

"It wasn't Dilly at all. It was Dolly! And he was able to distinguish between the two in that dim room. And _I_ couldn't!"

"Oh," said I carelessly, "I expect he noticed she wasn't wearing an engagement-ring."

My wife looked at me and sighed, as over one who would spoil a romance for want of a ha'porth of sentiment. And yet I know she would have been quite scandalised if any one had hinted at tender passages between her sister and my secretary. Women are curious creatures.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

OF A PIT THAT WAS DIGGED, AND WHO FELL INTO IT.

Dicky Lever was a hearty and not particularly intellectual youth of the What ho! type (if you know what I mean). He was employed in some capacity in a Government office, but his livelihood was not entirely dependent on his exertions therein--which was, perhaps, fortunate, as his sole claim to distinction in his Department lay in the fact of his holding the record for the highest score at small cricket in the Junior Secretaries' room. He was a member of the Leander Club, a more than usually capable amateur actor, and a very good fellow all round.

The engagement was announced at the end of July, which is a busy time for this country's legislators. The session was drawing to a close, and we were passing Bills with a prodigality and despatch which provoked many not altogether undeserved gibes from a reptile Opposition Press concerning the devotion of his Majesty's Government to the worship of Saint Grouse.

One night I brought Champion home to dinner between the afternoon and evening sittings. At the latter he was to move the second reading of his "Municipal Co-ordination Bill," a measure which was intended to grapple with the chaos arising from the multitude of opposing or overlapping interests that controlled the domestic arrangements of the Londoner. An effort was to be made to bring all the Gas, Electricity, Water, Paving, and other corporations into some sort of line, and prevent them from getting into each other's way and adding to the expenses and inconvenience of the much-enduring ratepayer. It was a useful little Bill; but though everybody approved of it on principle, various powerful interests were at work against it, and its prospects of getting through Committee hung in the balance.

"Now, Mr Champion," said Dilly, who knew that a man always likes to be questioned about his work, especially by a pretty girl, "what will your Bill do for _us_? I have asked this person here,"--indicating her _fiance_,--"but he says parish-pump politics aren't in his department.

He licks stamps at the Foreign Office," she added in explanation.

"Tell her, Champion," said Dicky. "Out of my line altogether. Takes me all my time to keep an eye on those Johnnies in the Concert of Europe."

"I will tell you one thing the Bill will do, Miss Dilly," said Champion, a little heavily. (Dolly once said of him, "He's awfully clever and able and all that, but he hasn't got a light hand for conversational pastry.") "How many times have you noticed the streets up about here this year?"

"Heaps," said Dilly.

"They have hardly ever been down," corroborated Dolly.

"Let me see," continued Dilly. "Our side of the Square was repaved in January. Directly after that they took it up again and did something to the drains."

"In March they opened it again to lay down an electric light main," said I.