"I don't repeat no calling names," said Mary Sands. "Mr. Parks, will you have some more of the pie? Cousin Sam, another piece? Cousin Sim? well, then, the meal is finished, Cousins!"
Each twin, as he rose from the table, cast a glance of invitation at Calvin Parks; but he hastily seized a dish. "I'm going to help Miss Hands clear off," he said; and he followed Mary Sands into the kitchen.
"Oh! Mr. Parks," said Mary, "you no need to do that! I'm well used to washing dishes!"
"I should suppose you was," responded Calvin Parks gallantly, "but if you'll let me help, Miss Hands, it would be an accommodation, now it would. Fact is," he continued, "I expect I shall bust if I don't find out what this all means, and I want you to tell me. How long have the boys been actin' this way?"
"How long?" repeated Mary Sands. "Ever since I come. Haven't they always been so?"
"Always been so?" repeated Calvin Parks. "Why, Miss Hands—why—" he looked about him helplessly. "Well, I am blowed!" he said plaintively. "I'll have to ask you to excuse the expression, Miss Hands, but I really am! Perhaps I'd better tell you how things used to be in this house, and then you can see how—how blowed I am at findin' them as they be."
"I should be real pleased if you would!" said Mary Sands. "I've been wonderin' and wonderin', ever since I come, but there's no near neighbors, you know, and I don't know as I should have cared to ask 'em if there had been; but you are a friend of both, I see, and it seems different."
"I'll wash to your wipin'," said Calvin Parks, taking off his coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves, "and we can talk as we go; I'm an old hand at dishes too. Well! Friend of both? well, I should remark! I lived on the next ro'd, not more'n half a mile across lots. You might have seen a burnt cellar hole?—Well, that was our home. First I remember of Sam and Sim was them sittin' together in their chair. 'Twas a queer chair, made o' purpose to hold the two of 'em. There they set, and tell 'tother from which was more than I could do, or anybody else for that matter, except their Ma. They might ha' been nine then, and I s'pose I was four or five. I rec'lect I went up to 'em and says, 'Be you one boy cut in two?' Cur'us things children are, sure enough. They was dressed alike, then and always; fed alike, and reared alike, every human way of it. Doctored alike, too, poor young ones! One time when they was babies the wrong one got the medicine, and after that Ma Sills always dosed 'em both, whichever was sick. 'There's goin' to be no partiality!' she says; 'the Lord made them children off the same last, and they're goin' to stay the same!' Why, Miss Hands, she wouldn't so much as allow they could think different. If they got to scrappin', same as all boys do, y'know, Ma would take 'em by the scruff of their necks and haul 'em up to the looking-glass. 'Look at there!' she'd say. 'Do you see them boys? do you see the way they look? Now I give you to understand that your souls inside is just as much alike as your bodies outside. I ain't sure but it's two halves of the same soul,' she'd say, 'and do you think I'm goin' to let 'em quarrel? You make up and love each other pretty right away, or I'll take the back of the hairbrush to you both!'
"So they'd make up; they had to! There! Ma Sills certinly did rule the roost, and no mistake. She'd been a widder ever since the boys were a year old, so she had to do for herself and them, and she done it. She was a master hand; a master hand!"
He shook his head, and washed the platter vigorously.