The Heavenly Twins (Victorian Feminist Novel). Grand Sarah

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      Evadne's patience with the twins was wonderful. She always took charge of them cheerfully on wet days and in other times of trouble, and managed them with infinite tact.

      "How do you do it, my dear?" Lady Adeline asked. "Do you talk to them and tell them stories?"

      "No," said Evadne, "I don't talk much; I—just don't lose sight of them—or interfere—if I can possibly help it."

      The twins had no reverence for anything or anybody. One day they were in Evadne's little sitting room which overlooked the courtyard. It was an antechamber to her bedroom, and peculiarly her own by right of primogeniture. Nobody ever thought of going there without her special permission—except, of course, the twins; but even they assumed hypocritical airs of innocent apology for accidental intrusion when they wanted to make things pleasant for themselves.

      On this particular occasion Evadne was sitting beside her little work-table busy with her needle, and the twins were standing together looking out of the window.

      "There's papa," said Diavolo.

      "He's going for a ride," said Angelica.

      "Doesn't he mount queerly?" Diavolo observed. "He'd be safer in a bath chair."

      "Not if we were wheeling him," Angelica suggested, with a chuckle.

      "What shall we do?" yawned Diavolo. "Shall we fight?"

      "Yes; let's," said Angelica.

      "You must do no such thing," Evadne interfered.

      "Not fight! Why?" Angelica demanded.

      "We must fight, you know," Diavolo asserted.

      "I don't see that," said Evadne. "Why should you fight?"

      "It's good for the circulation of the blood," said Angelica. "Warms a body, you know."

      "And there's the property, too!" said Diavolo. "We've got to fight for that."

      Evadne did not understand, so Angelica kindly explained: "You see, I'm the eldest, but Diavolo's a boy, so he gets the property because of the entail, and we neither of us think it fair; so we fight for it, and whichever wins is to have it. I won the last battle, so it's mine just now; but Diavolo may win it back if we fight again before papa dies. That's why he wants to fight now, I expect."

      "Yes," Diavolo candidly confessed. "But we generally fight when we see papa go out for a ride."

      "Because you are afraid he will catch you and punish you as you deserve, if he's at home, I suppose, you bad children."

      "Not at all," said Angelica. "It's because he looks so unsafe on a horse; you never know what'll happen."

      "It's a kind of a last chance," said Diavolo, "and that makes it exciting."

      "But wouldn't you be very sorry if your father died?" Evadne asked.

      The twins looked at each other doubtfully.

      "Should we?" Diavolo said to Angelica.

      "I wonder?" said Angelica.

      One wet day they chose to paint in Evadne's room because they could not go out. She found pictures, and got everything ready for them good-naturedly, and then they sat themselves down at a little table opposite each other; but the weather affected their spirits, and made them both fractious. They wanted the same picture to begin with, and only settled the question by demolishing it in their attempts to snatch it from each other. Then there was only one left between them, but happily they remembered that artists sometimes work at the same picture, and it further occurred to them that it would be an original method—or "funny," as they phrased it—for one of them to work at it wrong side up. So Angelica daubed the sky blue on her side of the table, and Diavolo flung green on the fields from his. They had large genial mouths at that time, indefinite noses, threatening to turn up a little, and bright dark eyes, quick glancing, but with no particular expression in them—no symptom either of love or hate, nothing but living interest. It was pretty to see Diavolo's fair head touching Angelica's dark one across the little table; but when it came too close Angelica would dunt it sharply out of the way with her own, which was apparently the harder of the two, and Diavolo would put up his hand and rub the spot absently. He was too thoroughly accustomed to such sisterly attentions to be altogether conscious of them.

      The weather darkened down.

      "I wish I could see," he grumbled.

      "Get out of your own light," said Angelica.

      "How can I get out of my own light when there isn't any light to get out of?"

      Angelica put her paint brush in her mouth, and looked up at the window thoughtfully.

      "Let's make it into a song," she said.

      "Let's," said Diavolo, intent upon making blue and yellow into green.

      "No light have we, and that we do resent,

       And, learning, this the weather will relent,

       Repent! Relent! Ah-men,"

      Angelica sang. Diavolo paused with his brush halfway to his mouth, and nodded intelligently.

      "Now!" said Angelica, and they repeated the parody together, Angelica making a perfect second to Diavolo's exquisite treble.

      Evadne looked up from her work surprised. Her own voice was contralto, but it would have taken her a week to learn to sing a second from the notes, and she had never dreamt of making one.

      "I didn't know you could sing," she said.

      "Oh, yes, we can sing," Angelica answered cheerfully. "We've a decided talent for music."

      "Angelica can make a song in a moment," said Diavolo. "Let me paint your nose green, Evadne."

      "You can paint mine if you like," said Angelica.

      "No, I shan't. I shall paint my own."

      "No, you paint mine, and I'll paint yours," Angelica suggested.

      "Well, both together, then," Diavolo answered.

      "Honest Injin," Angelica agreed, and they set to work.

      Evadne sat with her embroidery in her lap and watched them. Their faces would have to be washed in any case, and they might as well be washed for an acre as for an inch of paint. She never nagged with, "Don't do this," and "Don't do that" about everything, if their offences could be summed up, and wiped out in some such way all at once.

      "We'll sing you an anthem some day," Angelica presently promised.

      "Why not now?" said Evadne.

      "The spirit does not move us," Diavolo answered.

      "But you may forget," said Evadne.

      "We never forget our promises," Angelica protested as proudly as was possible with a green nose.

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