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Read Ebook: The Walcott Twins by Lovell Lucile Waugh Ida Illustrator
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Ebook has 1541 lines and 41757 words, and 31 pages
In their babyhood, Gay wore a pink, and May a blue ribbon for identification, but, if by chance these distinguishing marks became displaced, it often followed that Gay was kissed and coddled for a girl; while poor May was bounced and tossed and trotted for a boy. When they were put in short frocks the same mistakes were made.
"There'll be no such confusion when Gay puts on trousers," prophesied a sage relative of the family. Alas! for prophet; when Gay became a real boy in knickerbockers, the work of confusion still went on. Indeed, after knickerbockers began to play their part, it was worse than ever, for the twins were then old enough to understand the value of their resemblance in solid fun.
No truthful chronicler of their tricks would undertake to tell how many times the burden of Gay's misdoing was accepted by May, who lay demurely in bed, in broad daylight, in that young worthy's place, while he escaped to the park, there to sport in freedom. Nor how Gay took May's dose of castor oil, the medicine of all others most abhorred by her; nor how more than once he bore the ten strokes of the rattan designed for her palm, on his own, both remedies being administered by nurse, and received by the culprit or patient, as the case might be, in a pinafore donned for the occasion. Gay and May were not model children, but they possessed one splendid trait in common; they shared alike the pleasure and pain that fell to their lot, for their hearts were both loyal and generous.
Now let us return to the chamber of the Mistress. While Gay and May sat at her bedside, trying to "make her well" by kisses and petting, you may be sure the mother thought some time of the approaching separation before mentioning it, but at length she told them of the invitations they had received and of their father's wishes.
They heard her through in open-eyed amazement. Gay looked at May, and May returned the glance; then they clasped each other and cried together:
"Separate us, mother? It can't be done!"
JUST FOR FUN
The twins were in the nursery the next morning, when Jane told them that their father had gone away at an early hour, on business.
"Thomas will take you to the station," said Jane.
"What dreadful luck!" sighed Gay.
"Perfectly dreadful!" echoed May.
Not that they disliked Thomas. On the contrary, they liked him very well, but they had anticipated much pleasure in going to the station in their father's company; to be deprived of this was to have their cup of sorrow filled to overflowing.
"You must dress yourselves this morning," continued Jane. "Nurse is busy with your mother and I must take care of baby. I've laid out your clothes; when you are dressed go right down to breakfast; you've no time to play. Mary has baked some little muffins for you, and you can have orange marmalade and raspberry jam, both. Now, make haste." And busy Jane hurried away.
"Muffins! Does Jane think muffins will make us happy?" cried Gay, scornfully.
"It was good of Mary to bake them for us," said May, secretly thinking that hot muffins and marmalade were sovereign aids to happiness, though she did not dare to say so to Gay.
"Well, let's hurry up," said Gay, darting, with the swiftness of a swallow, into his room.
May was more deliberate in her movements, or, rather, her method of making her toilet differed somewhat from her brother's. With May, a bath was a preliminary operation; with Gay, it came last and could scarcely be called a bath at all, since he simply dipped his face and hands in the basin, and ignored the tub altogether, except upon such occasions as Jane enforced a thorough scrubbing. Family statistics show this dislike to soap and water to be a chronic ailment among boys from seven to fourteen years of age, but Gay always explained it by saying he was "rushed for time."
May was just pattering in from the bath-room when Gay emerged from his room fully dressed--more fully dressed, in fact, than he had been for a number of years.
"Why, Gay Walcott, you've got on my clothes!" May cried.
"I know it," replied Gay, piroueting airily around the room. "Jane must be crazy; she put your clothes in my room."
May ran into her room. "And yours in here," said she. "Come and get them, and give me mine."
"Try on mine--just for fun," urged Gay. "We'll see if Jane can tell the difference--which is which."
"There isn't time," objected May, rather faintly.
"There's lots of time," said Gay, who was never "rushed" when there was a chance for a prank.
When May came out of her room wearing Gay's clothes they stared at each other an instant, then ran to the mirror and stood before it, side by side, and stared at their reflections there.
"Oh!" cried May, "I am not sure that I am I!"
"You are not you," Gay answered, "you are I, and I am you. I hear Jane coming! What do you suppose she'll say?"
"Dear, dear!" cried Jane, bustling into the room. "Don't stand there looking into the glass. Why won't you hurry? You should have been half through breakfast by this time. Why, how clean your hands and face are, Master Gay--and I declare, you've actually brushed your hair!"
Jane looked from one to the other in unfeigned amazement. May giggled, but neither spoke.
"I'm surprised," Jane began, giving May a reproving glance. "Your sash isn't straight, Miss May. Turn around."
The sash was somewhat awry, for Gay, unaccustomed to such fripperies, had tied it under his left shoulder blade. He turned round and Jane fixed it, then giving his borrowed skirt several twitches, she said: "Seems to me you don't look quite as well as usual, Miss May. If you get untidy while your ma's sick she'll feel awful bad. But run along, now, to breakfast."
The twins exchanged significant glances: Jane had not detected them, May was about to exonerate herself from the charge of untidiness when Gay whispered: "Don't tell till we've tried it on Thomas and Mary."
"Let the goats butt; don't you try it, May!" said frolicsome Gay, pulling her after him out of the nursery.
In the dining-room Thomas and breakfast awaited them.
"Good morning, Thomas," said the mock May, very glibly.
"Good morning, Miss," responded unsuspicious Thomas. "Good morning, Master Gay."
"Good morning," replied the mock boy, not less glibly than the other conspirator.
"How do you think we look, Thomas," Gay continued; "as well as usual?"
"You look fine, Miss, fine," Thomas answered. "As for Master Gay there, I've never seen him look so neat."
"And little cakes!" interrupted May, with a scream of delight.
"Yes,--wid icin'," Mary replied, with a broad smile, for the twins were her especial pets. "But I niver knew that ye liked cake; I t'ought it was Miss May what had the swate toot!"
Gay and May smiled appreciatively at Mary's mistake. They were trying to explain to her that their gastronomical tastes were similar when nurse sailed majestically into the room.
"Mary," said she, "h'I'll see you h'in the kitchen. Thomas, 'urry hup; you must go h'in ten minutes. Children, Jane wants you h'in the 'all."
Before coming to America, nurse had been under-nurse-maid in an aristocratic English family, but from her deportment one would have supposed her to have been nurse to the Queen's own children. So majestic, pompous, and domineering was she that no one ventured to oppose or question her control. Therefore, when she ordered the group in the dining-room to separate they promptly separated without murmur or ado!
"They never suspected anything!" chuckled Gay, as he left the room with May. "We really must try it on mother, then we'll tell."
But Jane's first words when they reached the hall destroyed all hope of testing the mother.
"You mustn't fuss," Jane began, "you must be good and not make any trouble, but the doctor says you can't see your ma before you go."
"Why not?" the twins demanded in one voice.
"Because the doctor says if she gets as nervous to-day as she did yesterday that he won't answer for the consequences. She must be kept perfectly quiet."
"It is for her good," Jane said.
"Then we won't fuss," sighed May.
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