That pair of beauties, I saw at a glance, were out after scalps. They stood up side by side on the hearth-rug, absolutely and weirdly alike, and arrayed on this occasion in garments of identical hue and cut. This was a favourite device of theirs when about to meet a new young man; it usually startled him considerably. If he was not a person of sound nerve and abstemious habits, it not infrequently evoked from him some enjoyably regrettable expression of surprise and alarm. I knew all the tricks in their répertoire, and waited interestedly to see the effect of this series.
On being presented, both smiled shyly and modestly, and each simultaneously proffered a timid hand. The average young man, already a little rattled by the duplicate vision of loveliness before him, could never make up his mind which hand to shake first; and by the time he had collected his faculties sufficiently to make an uncertain grab at one, both would be swiftly and simultaneously withdrawn.
Robin, however, immediately shook hands with Dilly, who stood nearest to Kitty, and then with Dolly. After that he stepped back a pace and surveyed the pair with unconcealed interest.
Then he turned to my wife.
"A truly remarkable resemblance!" he observed benignantly. ("Just as if we had been two babies in a bassinette!" as Dolly afterwards remarked.)
Then he resumed his inspection. The Twins, who were entirely unused to this sort of thing, were too taken aback to proceed to their second move—the utterance of some trivial and artless remark, delivered by both simultaneously, and thereby calculated to throw the victim into a state of uncertainty as to which he should answer first. Instead, they stood wide-eyed and tongue-tied before him.
"I must certainly discover some point of difference between these ladies," continued Robin with an air of determination, "or I shall always be in difficulties. Do not tell me the secret, Mrs Inglethwaite. Perhaps I can find out for myself."
He concluded a minute inspection of the indignant Dilly, and turned his unruffled gaze on Dolly.
"Yes," he said, "I have it! You" (triumphantly to Dolly) "have a tiny brown spot in the blue of your left eye, while your sister has none."
It was quite true: she had. But it was a fact which most young men only discovered after many furtive and sidelong glances. This imperturbable creature had taken it all in in one resolute scrutiny; and Dolly, blushing like Aurora—an infirmity to which I may say neither she nor her sister are particularly subject—dropped her long lashes over the orbs in question and looked uncommonly foolish.