"Yes, dressed and out in the garden for hours! I took down all the combings for the birds and they are crazy about them. Can't you hear their hymn of thanksgiving?"
"Pig! Why didn't you call me?" and Dee rolled out of bed to beat Dum to the copper-kettle-like bathtub.
"I hate to wake you up when I have to, and goodness knows I am not going to do any gratuitous waking," I laughed. "Girls! I have had the time of my life, and have got to know Miss Arabella real well. She is simply a darling!" and I rummaged for my notebook.
I was afraid to put off for a moment jotting down in my little book some of the impressions of the morning. If I should forget anything Miss Arabella had told me I would never forgive myself. I wrote like mad all the time the twins were dressing, but it is strange about the things Miss Arabella divulged to me that morning; although I know that what an author or a would-be author hears in this life belongs to him, and is his property to be twisted and turned in his writing as he sees fit to use it, somehow those memories I have held sacred always, and I can't believe in my writing I could ever get so hard-pressed that I'd feel at liberty to make copy of what Miss Arabella told me on that enchanted morning in the garden.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CHANCE FOR LOUIS
Contrary to our expectations, Zebedee did not tease us at all for engaging board without knowing what it was. He said he was in thorough sympathy with all of us for shying at the subject, and for his part he was perfectly willing to trust the dear old ladies to do exactly the right thing.
He blew in, his usual manner of arriving, while we were at luncheon, and as we might have known, took the Misses Laurens by storm. The hereditary pokers melted as if by magic and even Miss Judith succumbed to his charms and promised to go to a moving picture show with him some night. As for Miss Arabella: her poker was only an imitation one, anyhow, and it did not take much to limber her up. It was rather astonishing, though, to find her unbending to the extent that she and Zebedee sang Gilbert and Sullivan operas together that evening in the garden, Zebedee doing Dick Deadeye with his usual abandon and Miss Arabella singing: