The Terrible Twins

by Edgar Jepson

He went to bed much pleased with his handiwork.

They spent a busy morning carrying their camping outfit to Deeping Knoll. The last two hundred yards of path to it was very narrow so that they transported their belongings to the entrance to it in Tom Cobb’s donkey-cart, and carried them up to the knoll on their backs.

In other years their outfit had been larger, for their mother had encamped with them. This year she had not cared for the effort; and she had also felt that ten days’ holiday out of the strenuous atmosphere which spread itself round the Twins, would be restful and pleasant. She was sure that they might quite safely be trusted to encamp by themselves on Deeping Knoll. Not only were they of approved readiness and resource; but buried in the heart of that wood, they were as safe from the intrusion of evil-doers as on some desert South Sea isle. She was somewhat surprised by the Terror’s readiness to take as many blankets as she suggested. In other years he had been disposed to grumble at the number she thought necessary.

The Twins had carried their outfit to the knoll by lunch-time; and they lunched, or rather dined, with a very good appetite. Then they began to arrange their belongings, which they had piled in a heap as they brought them up, in their proper caves. With a break of an hour for a bath this occupied them till tea-time. After tea they bathed again and then set about collecting fuel from the wood. They were too tired to spend much time on cooking their supper; and soon after it, rolled in their blankets on beds of bracken, they were sleeping like logs. They were up betimes, bathing.

This day was far less strenuous than the day before. They spent most of it in the pool or on its bank. In the afternoon Wiggins came and did not leave them till seven. Soon after eight o’clock the Terror set out to keep his tryst with the princess. He took with him the Socialist manifesto and pinned it to the post of a wicket gate opening from the gardens into the park on the opposite side of the Grange to Deeping Knoll. Then he came round to the door in the peach-garden wall two or three minutes before the clock over the stables struck nine.

He had not long to wait; he heard the gentle footfall of the princess on the garden path, the door opened, and she came through it. He shook hands with her warmly; and as they went up the screen of trees she told him how she had bidden the baroness and Miss Lambart good night, gone to her bedroom, ruffled the bed, locked the door, and slipped, unseen, down the stairs and out of the house. He praised her skill; and she found his praise very grateful.

The path to the knoll lay all the way through the dark woods; and the princess found them daunting. They were full of strange noises, many of them eery-sounding; and in the dimness strange terrifying shapes seemed to move. The Terror was not long discovering her fear, and forthwith put his arm round her waist and kept it there wherever the path was broad enough to allow it. When she quivered to some woodland sound, he told her what it was and eased her mind.

She was not strong enough in spite of her exercises and the active games with Wiggins, to make the whole of the journey over that rough ground at a stretch; and twice when he felt her flagging they sat down and rested. The princess was no longer frightened; she still thrilled to the eeriness of the woods, but she felt quite safe with the Terror. When they rested she snuggled up against him, stared before her into the dark, and thought of all the heroes wandering through the forests of Grimm, with the sense of adventure very strong on her. She was almost sorry when they came at last to the foot of the knoll and saw its top red in the glow of the fire Erebus was keeping bright.