A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat—neat, indeed, is no word for it—"parlour" of Arbitt Lodge. In what part of the country this queerly-named house was—is still, perhaps—to be found there is no particular reason for telling; whence came this same queer name will be told in good time. The parlour suited its name anyway better far than it would that of "drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been very good to be so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables holding inlaid "papier-maché" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes. And, most tempting of all to my mind, there were glass-doored cupboards in the wall, with great treasures of handleless teacups and very fat teapots, not to speak of bowls and jugs of every form and size; and everything, from the Indian box with the ivory chessmen to the china Turk with his long pipe of green spun-glass, sitting cross-legged on the high mantelpiece between a very sentimental lady and gentleman, also of china, who occupied its two ends,—everything was exactly and precisely in its own place, in what had been its own place ever since the day, now more than thirty years ago, when Grandpapa, the tall old gentleman, had retired from the army on half-pay and come to settle down at Arbitt Lodge for the rest of his life with Grandmamma and their son Marmaduke. A very small Marmaduke, for he was the only one left of a pretty flock who, one after the other, had but hovered down into the world for a year or two to spread their tiny wings and take flight again, leaving two desolate hearts behind them. And in this same parlour at Arbitt Lodge had that little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to run, to gaze with admiring eyes on the treasures in the glass cupboards, to play bo-peep behind the thick silken curtains, even in his time faded to a withered-leaf green, to poke his tiny nose into the bowl of pot-pourri on the centre table, which made him sneeze just exactly as—ah! but I am forgetting—never mind, I may as well finish the sentence—just exactly as it made "us" sneeze now!
After the tap came a kind of little pattering and scratching, like baby taps, not quite sure of their own existence; then, had Grandpapa's and Grandmamma's ears been a very little sharper, they could not but have heard a small duel in words.
"You, bruvver, my fingers' bones is tired."
"I told you, sister," reproachfully, "us should always bring old Neddy's nose downstairs with us. They never hear us tapping."
Then a faint sigh or two and a redoubled assault, crowned with success. Grandmamma, whom after all I am not sure but that I have maligned in calling her deaf—the taps were so very faint really!—Grandmamma looks up from her netting, and in a thin but clear voice calls out, "Come in!"
The door opens—then, after admitting the entrance of two small figures, is carefully closed again, and the two small figures, with a military salute from the boy, a bob, conscientiously intended for a curtsey, from the girl, advance a step or two into the room.
"Grandmamma," say the two high-pitched baby voices, speaking so exactly together that they sound but as one. "Grandmamma, it's 'us.'"
Still no response. Grandmamma is not indifferent—far from it—but just at this moment her netting is at a critical stage impossible to disregard; she thinks to herself "wait a moment, my dears," and is quite under the impression that she has said it aloud; this is a mistake, but all the same "my dears" do wait a moment—several moments indeed, hand-in-hand, uncomplainingly, without indeed the very faintest notion in their faithful little hearts that there is anything to complain of—there are some lessons to be learnt from children long ago, I think,—while Grandmamma tries to secure her knots.
Look at them while they stand there; it is always a good plan to save time, and we have a minute or two to spare. They are so alike in size and colour and feature that if it had not been that one was a boy and the other a girl, there would have been no telling them apart. Before Duke was put into the first stage of boy-attire—what that exactly was in those days I confess I am not sure—they never had been told apart was the fact of the matter, till one day the brilliant idea struck Grandmamma of decorating little Pamela with a coral necklace. She little knew what she was about; both babies burst into howling distress, and were not to be quieted even when the unlucky beads were taken away; no, indeed, they only cried the more. Grandmamma and Nurse were at their wits' end, and Grandpapa's superior intelligence had at last to be appealed to. And not in vain.
"They must each have one," said Grandpapa solemnly. And so it had to be. In consequence of which fine sense of justice and firm determination on the part of the babies, they went on "not being told apart" till, as I said, the day came when Marmaduke's attire began to be cut after a different fashion, and by degrees he arrived at his present dignity of nankin suits complete. Such funny suits you would think them now—funnier even than Pamela's white frock, with its skirt to the ankles and blue-sashed waist up close under the arm-pits, for even if she walked in just as I describe her you would only call her "a Kate-Greenway-dressed little girl." But Marmaduke's light yellow trousers, buttoning up over his waistcoat, with bright brass buttons, and open yellow jacket to match, would look odd. Especially on such a very little boy—for he and Pamela, as they stand there with their flaxen hair falling over their shoulders and their very blue eyes gazing solemnly before them, wondering when either of the old people will think fit to speak to "us"—Pamela and he are only "six last birfday."