“He seemed to think that we were—like the Douglases used to,” said the Terror in an amiable tone.
“But surely you knew that blackmailing is very wrong—very wrong, indeed,” said Mrs. Dangerfield.
“Well, he did seem to think so,” said the Terror. “But we thought he was prejudiced; and we didn’t take much notice of him.”
“And we couldn’t possibly let him take no notice of our letter, Mum—it was such a polite letter—and not take it out of him,” said Erebus.
“And it hasn’t done any harm, you know. We wanted those trout ever so much more than he did,” said the Terror.
Mrs. Dangerfield said nothing for a while; and her frown deepened as she pondered how to deal with the affair. She was still chiefly annoyed that Sir James should have been the victim. The Twins gazed at her with a sympathetic gravity which by no means meant that they were burdened by a sense of wrong-doing. They were merely sorry that she was annoyed.
“Well, there’s nothing for it: you’ll have to apologize to Sir James—both of you,” she said at last.
“Apologize to him! But he never answered our letter!” cried Erebus.
The Terror hesitated a moment, opened his mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again and said in a soothing tone: “All right, Mum; we’ll apologize.”
“I’ll take you to the Grange to-morrow afternoon to do it,” said Mrs. Dangerfield, for she thought that unless she were present the Twins would surely contrive to repeat the offense in the apology and compel Sir James to invite them to continue to fish.