"I thought I said you were to buy chocolates?" he said, with pretended severity.
He sat down on the stairs and took the bag from them, dividing it into equal parts and sharing out its contents. "Ough! How sticky," he complained, with a little grimace.
"Nice!" said the twins, unanimously. They were quite happy; nobody had told them, poor mites, of their irreparable loss.
Nicholas did his best to amuse them. He was worried and unhappy, but he racked the recesses of his brain for forgotten fairy tales, and told them of the wolves that used to howl over the prairie at night when he was a boy and of a tiger which his father had once shot in India.
They listened, wide-eyed and wondering, and when at last he paused they both scrambled to their feet.
"Tell Mums! Go and tell Mums!"
That was the beginning of the trouble. In vain he tried to put them off with stories that their mother was not well, that her head ached, that she was lying down and must not be disturbed. The twins were disbelieving, grew angry, and finally broke into tears and sobs.
Nicholas took them up, one on each arm, and carried them into the kitchen. He was afraid they would disturb Faith. He sat down in a big old armchair, a child on each knee, and soothed and petted, and made vague promises for the morrow if they were good, until finally they both fell asleep with his arms round them.
It was getting late then. A clock on the kitchen shelf struck eight, but Nicholas was afraid to move. His arms were cramped, and he was racked with anxiety for Faith, but he sat doggedly on until the kindly neighbour and the doctor came to him.
The doctor smiled as he saw Forrester's burdens, and the kindly neighbour came forward with little murmurs of sympathy, and carried the twins away one at a time, still sleeping, to bed.