HIDE AND SEEK
The Lockwood twins were glad of an excuse—and a good one—for dodging Aunt Dora for one afternoon and evening, and they therefore welcomed the invitation to the strawberry festival at the Sitz farm with acclaim. But there intervened the long Sunday when Aunt Dora nagged them—and everybody else about the cottage—all day.
Mary, the hired girl, who had been with them since she had landed at Ellis Island, and who loved the twins as though they were her own, and admired Mrs. Betsey more than anybody else living, came to the verge of "giving notice" whenever Aunt Dora came into view of the house.
"Sure, I was a bogtrotter when Oi landed, and we did kape the pig in the kitchen—I admit it," declaimed the faithful Mary. "But I've been bred to wor'rk under as clane a housekaper as ever wore shoes—God bless her! And to have that ould ormadoun come here and tell me me flures ar're not clane, and me bedrooms smell musty——Ah—h! bad 'cess to the loikes av her!"
Mrs. Betsey, to save losing Mary altogether, gave her permission to take Sunday afternoon and evening off. That would free her from the "eagle eye" of Aunt Dora for a few hours, at least.
"Aunt Dora is what old-fashioned people used to call 'nasty clean'," grumbled Mr. Lockwood, as he prepared to flee to his beloved plants, despite the sacredness of the day. "She's so clean that she makes everybody else unhappy about it. But have patience, children. It can't last forever."
It was Mrs. Betsey who was put through the "third degree" early in the morning. Couldn't she really tell the twins apart? Wasn't there something in their voices dissimilar? Was there not some mark on their bodies by which Dora could be distinguished from Dorothy? Hadn't one child a scar that the other did not have?
"My dear madam," declared the old housekeeper and nurse, in desperation. "I gave up the question as hopeless ten years and more ago. If those girls do not wish to own up, nobody can tell them apart, you may be sure of that. Yes, they are stubborn—and they are pert. They have never been governed by harshness or by fear. The only way that I know to make Dora tell you which she is, is to make her love you enough to tell you."
"Nonsense!" snapped Aunt Dora. "They are children. They must obey."
"In that particular, madam," said Mrs. Betsey, shaking her head, "I fail to see how you are to make them obey."
"They both should be punished."
"Even that would not make them obey you—no matter what the punishment. And you know," added the old lady, with eyes that began to brighten warningly, "Mr. Lockwood would not hear of the twins being punished."
"If they were mine I'd spank them both!" declared Aunt Dora, spitefully.
"And that is perhaps one reason why neither wishes to go home with you," returned Mrs. Betsey, pointedly.
As Mary was gone for the day the twins agreed to get tea; and there being a certain famous recipe, which had been the Lockwood family property for generations, for tea-biscuit, the twins promised Mr. Lockwood he should have them.
"Can't one of you make the biscuit, without the other?" demanded Aunt Dora, her gray eyes beginning to sparkle.
"Dora really makes them the best, I believe," said Mrs. Betsey, placidly, stroking the front of her silk gown, as she sat in her low rocker by the front window.
"Ha!" exclaimed the militant lady. "Then let Dora make them."
"Oh, we'll both make 'em," exclaimed one of the twins, getting up with her sister to go to the kitchen. "One of us can sift the flour while the other is preparing the tins. We'll make you a double quantity, Papa," she added, over her shoulder, her own eyes dancing merrily.
"Now! which was that?" demanded Aunt Dora. "Was it Dora—or Dorothy?"
"I really couldn't say," murmured Mr. Lockwood.
"Dorothy usually sifts the flour," offered Mrs. Betsey.
"But Dora makes up the biscuit best," said Mr. Lockwood.
Aunt Dora looked from one unruffled face to the other; then she got up quietly and stole from the room. She tiptoed through the hall to the pantry door. There she waited until she was sure the twins were busy at the dresser and stove.
So she stepped into the pantry and pushed aside the white dimity curtain at the window in the door which opened into the kitchen. One twin was busily buttering the tins while the other was sifting the ingredients of the biscuits in the big yellow mixing bowl.
"So Dorothy usually sifts the flour, does she?" muttered the determined old lady, staring hard at the back of the sifter's head.
But one thing Aunt Dora did not know. Every time the girl sifting the flour glanced up from her work she looked straight into a mirror over the dresser, tipped at such an angle that it showed the pantry door. She saw the curtain drawn back and her aunt's nose appear at the window. At once she said to her sister:
"Are you afraid of the wolf at the door?"
"Eh?" jerked out the other twin, looking up quickly.
"But if poor papa is so poor, you know, maybe one of us ought to go home with Aunt Dora."
The girl buttering the tins saw her sister's wink and nod, and glanced slily in the mirror, too.
"We will fight the wolf at the door and drive it away," she declared, with spirit. "We'll leave school and go to work rather than be separated. Isn't that the way you feel?"
"I should feel that I'd rather work than go home with Auntie, if I were Dora," declared she who was sifting.
"So should I if I were Dora," agreed her sister.
A minute later one of the girls, while testing the heat of the oven, screamed.
"Oh, oh!" she cried. "Oh, oh! I'm burned! Look at that!" and she held up her wrist with a white mark across it.
Her sister darted across the kitchen, crying:
"I'll get the witch hazel—you poor dear!"
She had forgotten Aunt Dora, hiding in the pantry, and she collided with her with considerable force.
"What's the matter with you?" demanded the exasperated old lady.
"Nothing with me," returned the hurrying girl. "It's she who's burned."
"Who's burned?" cried Aunt Dora. "Which of you is hurt?"
The girl who had stopped recovered her self-possession. "Let me go, Auntie," she said, quietly. "My sister has burned her wrist."
And so the anxious and determined aunt did not catch the twins off their guard, neither in war nor peace.