“Stand up! What do you mean by speaking to me sitting down?” cried Erebus in her most imperative tone.
The keeper stood up with uncommon quickness and a sudden sheepish air: “’E was poachin’,” he said sulkily.
“He was not! A little boy like that!” cried Erebus scornfully.
“Anyways, ’e was aidin’ an’ abettin’, an’ I’ve brought ’im to Mr. D’Arcy Rosynimer an’ it’s for ’im to say,” said the keeper stubbornly.
There came a faint click from the beautiful lips of Erebus, the gentle click by which the Twins called each other to attention. At the sound Wiggins, his face faintly flushed with hope, braced himself. Erebus measured the distance with the eye of an expert, just as there came into the farther end of the hall that large, flabby, pudding-faced young Pomeranian Briton, Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer.
“Where’s the boacher?” he roared in an eager, angry voice, reverting in his emotion to the ancestral “b.”
As the keeper turned to him Erebus sprang to the door and threw it wide.
“Bolt, Wiggins!” she cried.
Wiggins bolted for the door; the keeper grabbed at him and missed; the footman grabbed, and grabbed the interposing Erebus. She slammed the door behind the vanished Wiggins.
Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer dashed heavily down the hall with a thick howl. Erebus set her back against the door. He caught her by the left arm to sling her out of the way. It was a silly arm to choose, for she caught him a slap on his truly Pomeranian expanse of cheek with the full swing of her right, a slap that rang through the great hall like the crack of a whip-lash. Mr. D’Arcy Rosenheimer was large but tender. He howled again, and thumped at Erebus with big flabby fists. She caught the first blow on an uncommonly acute elbow. The second never fell, for the footman caught him by the collar and swung him round.