The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.
"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to help out—and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony—and even riding him a-straddle—and want to go to college just because their two brothers are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help the twins bountifully.
"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in everything, and catch on too, I must say I, for one, draw the line."
Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and patronized her in a loving way.
"We weren't there all the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all appearance, be dragged out of them—a process in which the twins revelled.
"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."
"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.
"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both the girls at the same time.
"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs. Googe's after you finish your supper—you can leave it with the girl and tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to taste it, poor soul!"
The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation came into their faces.