"What I think is that Captain Baster's notion of humor is catching; and that it affected Erebus and Wiggins," said Sir Maurice amiably. "And if we start apologizing, there will be no end to it. I should have to come in myself as the maker of the bomb who carelessly left it lying about."

"It was certainly a happy effort," said the vicar, smiling. Then he changed the subject firmly, saying: "We're going to London next week; perhaps you could recommend a play to us to go to, Sir Maurice."

A faint ripple of grateful relaxation ran round the circle and presently it was clear that in taking himself off Captain Baster had lifted a wet blanket of quite uncommon thickness from the party. They were talking easily and freely; and Mrs. Dangerfield and Sir Maurice were seeing to it that every one, even Mrs. Blenkinsop and Mrs. Morton, were getting their little chances of shining. The Twins and Wiggins slipped away; and their elders talked the more at their ease for their going. In the end the little gathering which Captain Baster had so nearly crushed, broke up in the best of spirits, all the guests in a state of amiable satisfaction with Mrs. Dangerfield, themselves and one another.

After they had gone Sir Maurice and Mrs. Dangerfield discussed the exploits of Erebus; and he did his best to abate her distress at the two onslaughts his violent niece had made on a guest. The Terror was also doing his best in the matter: with unbending firmness he prevented Erebus, eager to enjoy her uncle's society, from returning to the house till it was time to dress for dinner. He wished to give his mother time to get over the worst of her annoyance.

Thanks to their efforts Mrs. Dangerfield did not rebuke her violent daughter with any great severity. But even so, Erebus did not receive these milder rebukes in the proper meek spirit. Unlike the philosophic Terror, who for the most part accepted his mother's just rebukes, after a doubtful exploit, with a disarming sorrowful air, Erebus must always make out a case for herself; and she did so now.

Displaying an injured air, she took the ground that Captain Baster was not really a guest on the previous evening, since he was making a descent on the house uninvited, and therefore he did not come within the sphere of the laws of hospitality.

"Besides he never behaved like a guest," she went on in a bitterly aggrieved tone. "He was always making himself objectionable to every one--especially to me. And if he was always trying to score off me, I'd a perfect right to score off him. And anyhow, I wasn't going to let him marry you without doing everything I could to stop it. He'd be a perfectly beastly stepfather--you know he would."

This was an aspect of the matter Mrs. Dangerfield had no desire to discuss; and flushing a little, she contented herself with closing the discussion by telling Erebus not to do it again. She knew that however bitterly Erebus might protest against a just rebuke, she would take it sufficiently to heart. She was sure that she would not stone another guest.

With the departure of Captain Baster peace settled on Colet House; and Sir Maurice enjoyed very much his three days' stay. The Twins, though they were in that condition of subdued vivacity into which they always fell after a signal exploit that came to their mother's notice, were very pleasant companions; and the peaceful life and early hours of Little Deeping were grateful after the London whirl. Also he had many talks with his sister on the matter of settling down in life, a course of action she frequently urged on him.

When he went the Twins felt a certain dulness. It was not acute boredom; they were preserved from that by the fact that the Terror went every morning to study the cla.s.sics with the vicar, and Erebus learned English and French with her mother. Their afternoon leisure, therefore, rarely palled on them.

One afternoon, as they came out of the house after lunch, Erebus suggested that they should begin by ambushing Wiggins. They went, therefore, toward Mr. Carrington's house which stood nearly a mile away on the outskirts of Little Deeping, and watched it from the edge of the common. They saw their prey in the garden; and he tried their patience by staying there for nearly a quarter of an hour.

Then he came briskly up the road to the common. Their eyes began to shine with the expectation of immediate triumph, when, thirty yards from the common's edge, in a sudden access of caution, he bolted for covert and disappeared in the gorse sixty yards away on their left.

They fell noiselessly back, going as quickly as concealment permitted, to cut him off. They were successful. They caught him crossing an open s.p.a.ce, yelled "Bang!" together; and in accordance with the rules of the game Wiggins fell to the ground.

They scalped him with yells of such a piercing triumph that the immemorial oaks for a quarter of a mile round emptied themselves hastily of the wood-pigeons feeding on their acorns.

Wiggins rose gloomily, gloomily took from his knickerbockers pocket his tattered and grimy notebook, gloomily made an entry in it, and gloomily said: "That makes you two games ahead." Then he spurned the earth and added: "I'm going to have a bicycle."

The Twins looked at each other darkly; Erebus scowled, and a faint frown broke the ineffable serenity of the Terror's face.

"There'll be no living with Wiggins now, he'll be so c.o.c.ky," said Erebus bitterly.

"Oh, no; he won't," said the Terror. "But we ought to have bicycles, too. We want them badly. We never get really far from the village.

We always get stopped on the way--rats, or something." And his guileless, dreamy blue eyes swept the distant autumn hills with a look of yearning.

"There are orchards over there where they don't know us," said Erebus wistfully.

"We _must_ have bicycles. I've been thinking so for a long time," said the Terror.

"We must have the moon!" said Erebus with cold scorn.

"Bicycles aren't so far away," said the Terror sagely.

They moved swiftly across the common. Erebus poured forth a long monotonous complaint about the lack of bicycles, which, for them, made this Cosmic All a mere time-honored cheat. With ears impervious to his sister's vain lament, the Terror strode on serenely thoughtful, pondering this pressing problem. Now and again, for obscure but profound reasons, Wiggins spurned the earth and proceeded by leaps and bounds.

Possibly it was the monotonous plaint of his sister which caused the Terror to say: "I've got a penny. We'll go and get some bull's-eyes."

At any rate the monotonous plaint ceased.

They had returned on their steps across the common, and were nearing the village, when they met three small boys. One of them carried a kitten.

Erebus stopped short. "What are you going to do with that kitten, Billy Beck?" she said.

"We be goin' to drown 'im in the pond," said Billy Beck in the important tones of an executioner.

Erebus sprang; and the kitten was in her hands. "You're not going to do anything of the sort, you little beast!" she said.

The round red face of Billy Beck flushed redder with rage and disappointment, and he howled:

"Gimme my kitty! Mother says she won't 'ave 'im about the 'ouse, an' I could drown 'im."

"You won't have him," said Erebus.

Billy Beck and his little brothers, robbed of their simple joy, burst into blubbering roar of "It's ourn! It ain't yourn! It's ourn!"

"It isn't! A kitten isn't any one's to drown!" cried Erebus.

The Terror gazed at Erebus and Billy Beck with judicial eyes, the cold personification of human justice. Erebus edged away from him ready to fly, should human justice intervene actively. The Terror put his hand in his pocket and fumbled. He drew out a penny, and looked at it earnestly. He was weighing the respective merits of justice and bull's-eyes.

"Here's a penny for your kitten. You can buy bull's-eyes with it," he said with a sigh, and held out the coin.

A sudden greed sparkled in Billy Beck's tearful eyes. "'E's worth more'n a penny--a kitty like 'im!" he blubbered.

"Not to drown. It's all you'll get," said the Terror curtly. He tossed the penny to Billy's feet, turned on his heel and went back across the common away from the village. Some of the brightness faded out of the faces of Erebus and Wiggins.

"I wouldn't have given him a penny. He was only going to drown the kitten," said Erebus in a grudging tone.

"It was his kitten. We couldn't take it without paying for it," said the Terror coldly.

Erebus followed him, cuddling the kitten and talking to it as she went.

Presently Wiggins spurned the earth and said, "There ought to be a home for kittens n.o.body wants--and puppies."

The Terror stopped short, and said: "By Jove! There's Aunt Amelia!"

Erebus burst into a bitter complaint of the stinginess of Aunt Amelia, who had more money than all the rest of the family put together, and yet never rained postal orders on deserving nieces and nephews, but spent it all on horrid cats' homes.

"That's just it," said the Terror in a tone of considerable animation.

"Come along; I want you to write a letter."

"I'm not going to write any disgusting letter!" cried Erebus hotly.

"Then you're not going to get any bicycle. Come on. I'll look out the words in the dictionary, and Wiggins can help because, seeing so much of his father, he's got into the way of using grammar. It'll be useful. Come on!"

They came on, Wiggins, as always, deeply impressed by the importance of being a helper of the Twins, for they were in their fourteenth year, and only ten brief wet summers had pa.s.sed over his own tousled head, Erebus clamoring to have her suddenly aroused curiosity gratified.

Practise had made the Terror's ears impervious at will to his sister's questions, which were frequent and innumerable. Without a word of explanation he led the way home; without a word he set her down at the dining-room table with paper and ink before her, and sat down himself on the opposite side of it, a dictionary in his hand and Wiggins by his side.

Then he said coldly: "Now don't make any blots, or you'll have to do it all over again."